song of the week 31: cecil sharp project - meadows of dan

Here's a song I heard at the Shrewsbury Folk Festival at the weekend.

I told various friends I was going to the festival and almost all of them asked straight away: "Who's on?" Other than the ubiquitous Bellowhead, who claim to have performed at twenty-two festivals this summer, I couldn't particularly remember any names I was particularly looking forward to. Generally I don't go to festivals just because of the headliners but in the hope that, among the maybe twenty or so artists I'll be seeing in the space of a few days, there'll be the unexpected discovery of new artists who I haven't heard of before.

One such was Caroline Herring whose solo set was one of my highlights of the weekend. There's not a great deal of her own material available on the internet although the Cecil Sharp Project*, to which she contributed and who also performed at Shrewsbury, has received a fair amount of media coverage. Here's a pleasingly tuneful number from the resulting CSP album featuring Caroline Herring on lead voice and guitar:



* The Cecil Sharp Project is a suite of songs and tunes based on the life and work of the famous song collector composed and performed collaboratively by a number of folk musicians. This YouTube clip explains more.

womadness

Songs of the Last Three Weeks (numbers 27-29, not that anyone's counting...):

I Am Kloot - I Still Do
Oi Va Voi - Yesterday's Mistakes
Ana Moura - No Expectations

A couple of weeks ago I went off to the WOMAD festival. Despite its reputation as an exclusively world music affair, I actually found that in terms of the range of music on offer there's quite a lot more to it than that. For example. we also got:

• the genre-defying Penguin Cafe,
• lounge-dubsteppers(?) Submotion Orchestra: meaty bass-pedal effects to make your chest rattle and flugelhorn to send your spirits a-soaring,
• Louisiana's Feufollet, beloved of Elvis Costello, peddling an interesting cocktail of cajun (all fiddles and accordions) and indie (all guitars and winsome vocals), and
• Guy Garvey's Mercury-nominated mates I Am Kloot.

I know some people go to festivals to have a good ole party and consequently maybe judge the quality of the music on the extent to which it allow them to jolly well dance their socks off, but for me the great moments of the weekend were the quieter ones. I have to say that these three songs fair brought a lump to my throat...

Genial lead Klooter Pete Branwell admitted that the band had been sceptical about coming to WOMAD and "weren't sure they would fit in". They got a good reception though from what seemed to be a preponderance of white males of a certain age (er, like me...). This was a great pin-drop moment:



Oi Va Voi gave as energetic a performance as ever and went down a storm with the party people. I'm not sure though they've ever matched the quality of the songwriting on their first album, is it really eight years ago? I doubt that KT Tunstall (for it is she) ever regretted her move away from the band in view of the millions of albums she's shifted since, but for me this is by far the best thing she's written. Also what I'm guessing is Steve Levi's "cantorial" singing--anyone?--gets me every time:




I'm not generally a massive fan of Fado but I really enjoyed Ana Moura's performance. I'm sure world music purists would cringe at my lack of deference to nearly two centuries of Portuguese musical tradition but for me this Rolling Stones cover was the highlight of her set:




Next week something more upbeat, I promise...

song of the week 24: fleet foxes - sim sala bim

Did anyone else notice the preponderance of facial hair on display at Glastonbury this year?

There was this lot:

...who pale in hirsuteness in comparison with these boys:

...who are almost a latter-day...

No, you're right. ZZ Top didn't actually show up at Glastonbury although they're still very much a going concern and if you're interested--and are prepared to go to all that trouble--you can catch them on a mammoth US tour round about now. (You'll remember of course that Frank Beard is the comparatively clean-shaven one.)

It's Fleet Foxes though who are pretty much the pick of the beardy bunch for me at the moment. I've been giving their recent Helplessness Blues album a good few spins and it seems to me every bit as good as their 2008 debut. Here's a track from their Glasto set:



Spotter's badge if you identified Elbow and Eels hiding behind the hair at the top of the page.

oktoberfest

Musicport Festival @ The Spa, Bridlington, 24th/25th October

This festival hasn't been on my radar until now--mainly because it's way "oop north" I suppose--but it actually celebrated its tenth anniversary this year. It's now relocated from its early days in Whitby and relaxed the "folk-only" policy of yesteryear to include world music--the African Jazz Allstars and Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara featured on the Sunday evening, and reggae--Misty In Roots and the Mad Professor Ariwa Posse, er, served up a double helping on Saturday night.

It's good to go to festivals like this I think because it reminds you just how many talented gigging musicians there are plying an honest trade with no lucrative album deal to line their coffers and no media exposure or so-called critical acclaim to promote their cause.

Honourable mentions, then, go to the following for brightening up my weekend:

• Martin Stephenson: erstwhile Daintee with a nice line in Woolworth guitars and self-deprecating Geordie stage patter.
  
• Fernhill: Welsh folksters featuring Julie Murphy, billed as "Eliza Carthy's favourite voice in the world" (and who am I to argue?). Sadly their sound was utterly lost in the cavernous main hall: "Last night we played in a bookshop which wasn't even as big as this stage".
  
• Karen Tweed: survived an early hours breathalizer incident in Newcastle city centre to purvey early Saturday morning accordion-based tunes. Very nice too.
  
• Pacific Curls: female Maori/Scots threesome featuring fiddle, ukelele, cajon, body percussion and Natalie Imbruglia's guitarist.
  
• Chumbawamba: steadfastly refuse to play "the hit" and promise an anti-Thatcher tribute album when the old bag croaks.
  
• Delta Maid: she talks like a boy soprano Wayne Rooney but sings like Shelby Lynne. I couldn't decide if these were her own songs; if so, she's a tremendously gifted writer for her age.
  
• Samay: Yorkshire-based jazz/rock/fusion-type thing with sax, guitar and bass alongside sarod and tabla--reminded me a bit of Indian percussionist Trilok Gurtu who I've seen at WOMAD in years gone by.
  

now that's what i call genealogy

Saint Etienne, Charlatans, Bombay Bicycle Club @ Summer Sundae, 15th August



We love Saint Etienne...

broadstairs revisited

Broadstairs Folk Festival, 8th & 13th August

Some highlights:

- Mississippi Ol' Macdonald: He's not old (late twenties, I'd say) and sounds like he's from nearer the Thames Delta than the Mississippi. His name may be Macdonald though. A great gravelly blues voice and some nifty fret work. Songs by Big Bill Broonzy, Muddy Waters, and other usual suspects. He's chock full of stories too, from his time in Memphis where he's been helping to raise money for a gravestone for O.V. Wright, unsung soul legend who died in 1980. It never occurred to me that steel guitars (he plays a National Steel for some numbers) are apt to go out of tune because they expand and contract dependant on the temperature. Obvious really...

- The Woodshed Session: I came here last year and recognise many of same faces this time. Individually they're called on in turn to sing or play a tune while the others strum, bow, blow and/or sing along with varying degrees of confidence. Some of them are impressively talented: a flautist improvises some interesting flute accompaniment to "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" and an accordionist hurtles through a couple of reels at breakneck speed. Quite interesting that these hidden pockets of amateur music-making exist...

- Cocos Lovers were busking down by the harbour and I shelled out a fiver for a couple of CDs on the strength of their pleasing vocal harmonies and instrumental arrangements. I like their songs but I'm not sure how far that name will get them. Debut album coming soon it seems.

singing in the rain

Guilfest, 11th July

I've seen Brian Wilson before a couple of times before. There's nothing new this time. Again he sits behind an unused keyboard, sings, sometimes in tune, now and then forgets the words of his own songs, and drinks from a paper cup while his band construct a show around him. For the third time, he asks anyone who has one to get out their cigarette lighter out and flick it on, then jokes "OK that's twelve cigarette lighters!"

Despite this, he still holds most of the cards: two hours' worth of classic songs, thirty-odd years of mental breakdown now behind him and in recent years seemingly as much a sucker for touring as anyone forty years younger than him, and yes a band of fantastic backing musicians: there's no reason why we won't be back for more next time.



Athlete, for all the bland Coldplayosity which pervades much of their music, can nonetheless rustle up the occasional satisfying singalong chorus, viz. "You got the style", "El Salvador" and "Westside", and they have one great song. Apparently they picked up an Ivor Novello award for it (mind you can be Mike Batt or James Blunt and win one of these):



We get very wet. But we sing along anyway.

Also starring: Linda Lewis, Eddi Reader, Transglobal Underground, The Charlatans, Los Albertos, The Le Brocks.

parklife 1

Hard Rock Calling, 27th June @ Hyde Park

After an impressive and hugely enjoyable two hour performance of classic songs by Neil Young, headlining the second of this three-day festival, it's probably a bit churlish of me to rant on about such a small thing... but what is it with the end of his songs?

I have observed that there's a longstanding convention that guitarist, drummer and bassist should mark the absolute end of the absolutely last note of a guitar-fuelled rock-out number (not really on my own patch here so bear with me) with what I can only describe as a simultaneous testosterone-induced "kerchang!"

Most, if not all, of Young's electric guitar-based songs tonight end, not just with this, er, "kerchang" but also with an extended feedback-fest or frantic exchange of unnecessary noodling with the drummer, each lasting some considerable time. It's a bit tedious frankly.

Seems it was ever thus with NY. Check out this performance of "Cinnamon Girl" from 1978:



See what I mean? The song as we know it (because we've heard the record right?) ends at 3:25 and yet the final "kerchang" doesn't get to us until 3:58.

It's asking a lot of an audience to keep the clapping and cheering going all that time, particularly when the same thing happens with every other song, and sure enough at the end of one number this evening NY complains that the crowd are "awful quiet". That'll be because we clapped and cheered for that last song when it finished five minutes ago Neil mate. Can you not wind things up a bit more sharpish?

Lest I present an unduly curmudgeonly view of proceedings, these are some of the things I did enjoy during the course of the afternoon/evening...

• Everything else about NY. He's always been rather on the peripheries of my musical taste but I somehow know about two-thirds of the songs.
• Fleet Foxes. Love those arrangements and they're pretty spot on with their vocal harmonies. Just a shame that a lot of festival goers talk, quite loudly, over their songs...
• Magic Numbers, as ever. They'll soon have a new album out--hoorah!--and here are some of the songs from it, which sound good.
• "A Day in the Life", NY's encore, along with showbiz mate one Sir Paul McCartney. Yes, I know he's got his thumbs up again like a grinning loon but he's a Beatle and I've never seen one of them before...

day trip to broadstairs

Broadstairs Folk Week, 15th August

A couple of hours' train journey from London, Broadstairs has got a fair bit to offer: a small but unspoilt town centre, an attractive promenade and beach, a bit of Dickens-related history, and, for the last couple of weeks, more Morris Dancers than you can shake a stick at. You know, those weird jangly ones with bells and ribbons on?

The Broadstairs Folk Week was founded as long ago as 1965 so not surprisingly there are some heavy duty folkies in attendance and fiddles, acoustic guitars and accordions are ten a penny. Even the folk mainliners at Broadstairs though are willing to concede that the "folk music" label spreads its wings more widely in these globalised times than used to be the case. Consequently, as well as British and Irish artists, there are also Eastern Europeans (Warsaw Village Band), Jamaicans (Two Man Ting) and West Africans (N'faly Kouyate and Dunkayan).

There are hundreds of performances during the course of the two weeks. Many of these are outdoors or in pubs where a bucket is passed round for contributions; there are also a couple of medium-sized venues at about £3 a go; then, for the stadium folky, a couple of concert hall-type affairs where you can pay a whopping £12 to see more well-known artists like Cara Dillon and the ubiquitous Eliza Carthy.

High spots of my day are Canadian duo The Wind Whistles and a two-hour long "session"--something I'd never experienced before--at the Wrotham Arms featuring Peter and Barbara Snape (left).

...And it's all very photogenic.

to glasto or not to glasto

OK that makes five years now that I've sat on the settee watching the highlights of Glastonbury. Should I finally go next year?

the great outdoors

Wychwood Festival @ Cheltenham Racecourse, 30th May-1st June

Yay. Festivals. We like them. Even if we stay in a wussy B&B instead of braving it with the campers...

Some of the highlights of the weekend:

- The Blockheads - can still cut some rug but who was that Ian-Dury-a-like swigging whisky and forgetting the words?
- Rachel Unthank - even if I left after three songs to go and see...
- Emma Pollock (pictured) - why did these great songs get such a lukewarm reception?
- Duffy - purely on the strength of that long sustained note towards the end of "Warwick Avenue"
- Imagined Village - I'll have some of what Eliza Carthy is having...
- The Divine Comedy - I'd forgotten I knew all these songs
- Dengue Fever - woman lead singing in Cambodian backed with LA 60s psychedelic-rock: it shouldn't work but it somehow does
- Misty's Big Adventure
- The Black Bloc

Plus:
- What the Independendent made of it all

Our roving youtube reporter gives it the hard sell:

why we love modern stuff: 1

Episode 1: youtube



This video of "I Don't Know What It Is" by Rufus Wainwright is just brilliant.

I'll tell you why:

• It really captures the atmosphere at Glastonbury. Look at that clear blue sky at the beginning (well it can happen) and there are some choice cutaway crowd shots later on.
• You can hear lots of backing parts which don't come through on the proper recording like the wah-wah guitar when the drums kick in at 0:38 (Is that a hot-air balloon fading off into the distance?)
• 1:03. The backing vocals are sublime (is that too strong a word?) all through. Again, you can't hear them on the CD. (I think that's Sister Martha hiding behind the sunglassed guitarist.)
• 1:31. Hear that new guitar part?
• 1:39. The bloke in the straw hat is having such a good time.
• 1:44. "Is there anyone else?" Those backing vocals really take off now. Sing it (mainly) girls, but also boys...
• 2:36. You can hardly hear the trumpets (and they're normally really loud right?) but it doesn't matter cos Martha and her mate are still going for it.
• 3:10. Caught up in the emotion of the moment, paralysis sets in in Rufus's left hand but it's OK cos you can hear the trumpets now.
• 3:40. No! What's that member of the stage crew doing with those tangled leads? He's totally spoiling the mood.
• 3:47. OK this is the big moment. Three backing vocal phrases over "I don't know what it is to get me over" x2, "I don't know what it is..."
• 3:58. ...puts the tin lid on it for me.
• 4:02. The music just takes off... (bit like that balloon just now)
• 4:27. Not the most musical of endings maybe, but it's about a train, see, and it's pulling into the station.

..and Old Rufus can really belt it out.

Did I mention that this is a great song too?

Well I think so.

cool for cats

Guilfest, 14th July 2007

Now that WOMAD has moved from twenty minutes' walk from my B&B haven in Reading to some far-flung country park, I have to make do with a day at Guilfest for my annual festival fix. Amazingly, in the middle of a rain-drenched summer, it was sunny all day.

My highlights:
- Squeeze (first appearance together since 1999 and now off to tour the States): Superb. So many great songs. Shame GT's voice was giving him jip.
- Morcheeba: the red sunset and rainbow with no rain!
- Judie Tzuke singing along to a Morcheeba number. I was back in 1982.
- Rory McLeod: I thought old school left-wing protest singers had died out, and check out that 80s hairstyle!
- Jimmy Cliff: he's got loads of hits, and a groovy orange boiler suit...