Reading Festival, Caversham Bridge

Reading Festival

August 27-29, 2010

When the music at Reading Festival begins on Friday (following a boozy Thursday session in the town centre), a hangover is as welcome as the evacuation of vomit that preceded it (said sickness is still being blamed on an salmonella-friendly campsite BBQ on Thursday night). As the phrase goes, time stands still for no man (even one with a hangover) and a now-successful remedy is to get a cold pint of Gaymers (other ciders are available, just nowhere near the festival site) and head off to see some bands. … Continue Reading

Mercury Prize 2010 – Our Predictions

The xx - xx

As Paul The Octopus isn’t returning our calls we’ll have to make do with our own physic cephalopod, Mitchell Stirling as he casts his tentacles over the elite 12 British and N. Irish records that might be receiving nods next week.

Last year I, like most people felt that Doves winning would be to similar to the Elbow win the previous year but didn’t think that would prevent them getting a nod (nor did the bookies, they were favourites). Similarly we all thought that Portishead’s Third was a lock the year before and it didn’t make it. This year we can’t even find odds before the nominations but you can pick up a vibe on a few releases. … Continue Reading

Dot To Dot Festival, Manchester

Dot To Dot

The premise for Dot to Dot is as simple as it is effective: by holding a festival where the stages are the city’s pre-existing venues, a remarkably meaty line-up can be offered for a fraction of the price of any similar outdoor event.  My beloved home city of Leeds has been pulling an identical trick for the last couple of years with its imaginatively titled Live at Leeds event but it, in its infancy, pales slightly in comparison to the more powerful sway of Dot to Dot. It was excellent news for me, then, when Dot to Dot announced an inaugural Northern event in Manchester.

… Continue Reading

The Great Escape, Brighton – Part Two

Best Coast by Mitchell Stirling

Friday March 14, 2010

Waking up to a surprisingly glorious day,  we think nothing better of spending the entire morning on the beach, with newspapers and highlighters for planning tonight’s action. A regular appearance for Muso’s Guide at birthday boy David Quantick’s fiendishly hard music quiz sees us competing against Simon Price and various professional journalists and Stephen Morris of New Order – we fall to 4^th despite being in the leading pack throughout and vow to come back next year and at least recapture our silver medals from 2008 and 2009. Quantick’s many references to Stephen Patrick Morrissey throughout the quiz led to us having a discussion about THAT 1992 NME cover on the seafront, just as Johnny Marr, in town for Thursday’s secret Cribs show, walks past, clearly overhearing us. Whoops!

… Continue Reading

Wild Beasts, Newcastle Cluny

Wild Beasts

March 19, 2010

You may or may not have noticed it in the last year or so, but we here at Muso’s Guide are quite fond of  Wild Beasts. After a raft of thoroughly deserved acclaim for their second album Two Dancers (including their capturing of the number one spot in our writers’ collective top 50 of 2009, and the Editor’s), the Kendalians’ bandwagon is trundling merrily on with their current tour in support of the single release of ‘We Still Got the Taste Dancin’ On Our Tongues’. Ably supported by the darkly captivating work of  Lone Wolf, and Erland and the Carnival, whose bouncy, mildly pyschedelic pop invokes the untethered sense of adventure shown by the early recordings of The Coral, Wild Beasts are quite clearly in the form of their lives. … Continue Reading

Lisbon’s Youthless cover Wild Beasts for Portugalia

Youthless

Muso’s Guide favourites Youthless are getting a name for themselves over in their home country of Portugal, with radio DJ Henrique Amarro inviting them in for four days on his show, Portugali, to do a series of acoustic covers of some of their favourite songs.

You can hear them from March 8 – 11 at 3pm on Antena 3 and on the station’s podcast after those dates. They’ve also covered The XX’s ‘Islands’, to be aired later in March. Not only is their employment of a synth killer, but their music taste appears to be similar. … Continue Reading

The Weekly Froth #19

Silver Columns

Track of the week:

‘Cavalier’ by Silver Columns (Time and Space Machine remix)

I don’t know much about Silver Columns, that always puts a damp on me trying to differentiate between who is responsible for which parts, but I am acquainted with The Time and Space Machine fair enough, and this does sound like a remix he would do. I love the easy and fresh start, not so into the beat that comes after, but it fits the song. I love the vocals, though I will be the first to admit that they might not be the best vocalists around (or at least are not showcasing that here), but sometimes it is more in the delivery, and I love that rather drowsy thing they do. I was waiting for a Benga like turning point after a stretched vocals only bit, but it stayed rather restraint, a bit more hypnotic than climactic. But hypnotic is good, and it is an atmosphere he sustains towards the end. I love the added, soft piano, that is such a peaceful sound between the hypnotic beat, lovely. He could’ve rode that sound home, and perhaps I would have preferred that over the new beat ending and returned vocals, but oh well, it’s still a good remix anyhow, definitely worth the listen. And at least the vocals return, that’s a plus. … Continue Reading

2009: fragments of genre-confounding greatness; a parallel overview

HEALTH - Die Slow

With all the best of the decade lists being flung about at the moment, 2009 is in danger of getting overlooked. You can kind of forgive a few people for wanting to get the ’00s out of the way with to start a fresh in the next decade – in terms of world events it’s been a particularly shocking ten years – but this is a music website (usually) and we must avert our gaze, stick our headphones on and enter the parallel universe that is popular music.

New York cast a long shadow over the independent music world in 2009, just as it had done way back in 2001 – the internet and, more surprisingly, large sections of the mainstream fell for albums by The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Dirty Projectors, Animal Collective and (Jay-Z’s new favourite) Grizzly Bear. These bands made sonically unique albums that still retain a certain amount of insularity – these are carefully-crafted other worlds on record, and they were a little too careful and too crafted for some.

… Continue Reading

Our top 50 singles of 2009

While we’ve given you plenty of editorial on our albums of the year (50-41, 40-31,30-21, 20-16, 15-11, 10-7. 6-4 3-1), we’re keeping it simple with this list of what releases our gaggle of writers collectively voted their singles of 2009. How did we reach this list, I hear you cry? May I hand over to our trusty friend, Excel Guru, who was last seen pre-ambling our top 50 albums end-of-year thingamejig:

“Everyone sent in a top 10 list and the 50 singles with the most nominations were collected; tie-breaks were decided by how high up those lists the songs were. Then everyone chose 10 ordered singles from the list of 50 and they were ranked using the same criteria as the album poll.”

… Continue Reading

The Best Albums of 2009: Editor’s Choice

Wild Beasts - Two Dancers

As a companion piece to our 50-1 countdown that hit the internet gradually over the past couple of weeks (check the top three and work backwards), I’ve decided to do this piece on my own personal top 20. First person writing, the chance to eschew writing as voice of a consensus – my very own top albums of 2009 as some sort of deeper representation of what this here site’s all about.

The order is very loose, and I guess based on factors such as how and how much I enjoyed them. I could probably put these albums in a tombola, get them out re-ordered and still call it a fair representation of my year. That said, the top five would have to be the top five, and in that order. They are five incredible albums that have added a next-level fever to this year. … Continue Reading