Monday 30 June 2008

Glastonbury 2008: Review #1

Glastonbury 2008
Bang for Buck or Dead as the Dodo

Rain, Wellingtons and Ponchos are just some of the words that are usually thrown around when talking about Glastonbury. However, I think Great-Fucking-Music should be the phrase on the tip of everyone's tongue, especially when talking about this years' festival.
Now I can't speak from experience from previous years as I've never been to Glasto; although I can tell you now that the biggest festival in the world has now been cemented without question as the greatest festival the world has ever seen.

After a storming 2007 that although was graced with a debut headline performance from the one and only Arctic Monkeys, it was undboutedly over-shadowed by the terrible weather conditions and simply uncanny supply on mud on show. I think there were more bands on show than blades of grass by the end of it and people had to resort to paying tractors to tow their cars out of the mud; hardly fair is it.


I feel Michael and Emily Eavis have put last years' problems behind them and started a-fresh, which includes a 25% increase on the site size, now covering an area of just over 50 acres. I'm not even sure a Russian launched ICBM could have disrupted the organisation and dedication for this years' party that I witnessed during the five days I was there.
Eavis Snr has threw the cat amongst the pigeons and took Glastonbury back to its grass roots principals when he booked Jay-Z. Ok, Hip-Hop has never appeared in such a prominent way before, but the principal of Glastonbury has always been to offer the most diverse display of musical talent possible to the public. He could have played the safe bet that Reading and Leeds did this year by throwing huge American rock bands Rage Against The Machine, The Killers and Metallica into the limelight to secure a sell out crowd.

Glastonbury however, despite all the criticism and hype, managed to finally sell out every single ticket by Friday afternoon, I can safely say thats a big f-u to the haters.Enough is enough, throwing the hype and gossip aside that includes the whole 'Jay-Z' saga down the drain, I'll just say one thing before tomorrow's first proper review post kicks things off. It really was just 'a little bit' special.
Let the most controversial Glastonbury Festival of Contempory Arts, begin...

Monday 16 June 2008

Up & Coming Artists #10: Letters From London

Letters From London
Jokes, Jeans & Tunes

Now first things first, this may come over as a bit of a biased post, because the lead singer of the band I used to go to school with. So you could targer me for a bit of selfless plugging, but that is far, far beyond the point.

Letters From London are a 4-piece indie band from Gravesend in Kent, that hail their influences from bands like The Libertines, Bob Dylan and everything and anything to do with Peter Doherty. However, don't let that turn your nan in her grave at the mere thought of another indie-pop skinny jean wearing scenesters.

Recently they appeared on Hew Stephens BBC Introducing show on Radio 1 as part of this years' Kent themed Radio 1 Big Weekend and the local band scene within the Garden of England. Their debut single 'Little Vagabond' was played on the show, and they've been shapped up to play on the Suburban Nights stage at this years' debut Zoo Thousand Festival, also happening in Kent.
And also NME featured Little Vagabond in their mag last years stating their 'Like The Metros, but miles, miles better."

The song itself is a urban parody of a certain so and so, that find himself surrounded by problems and anxioties, peer pressure and everything zany in the world, yet can't be drawn away from the mischiveous natures of teenage life.
"I never played football at school, I guess I wasn't cool", emancipating the indie scene of yesteryear at every chord change its hard to see past the Libertine cape, but when you do, other songs 'Sir Walters Sunday Lemons' and 'End of the World', hit you literally like the middle of a Lemon Sherbet.

If you're looking for a band with a refreshing look on the scene but with a quality and presense of some of today's bigger bands then look no further than these lot. With a few festival appearances during the summer for the lads and a support slot with Pete & The Pirates in August, the end of the year and early next year. If the popularity reins in strong then I could see a re-release of Little Vagabond.

Letters From London - Little Vagabond
Letters From London - Sir Walters Sunday Lemons

Tuesday 10 June 2008

Album Review #6: The Fratellis

Something very important has happened as a result of my blogs here, I am now writing along with SiD and Mike over at SonicDice, and this is my first post on the site that appeared there last monday, so check it out HERE!

The Fratellis
Here We Stand

You’ve just risen to fame in an instant by becoming one of the biggest bands in the country (after selling one and a half million copies of your debut album worldwide) and you’ve just convinced almost everyone in your native country that Franz Ferdinand were just a phase (because suddenly your band is the best thing Scotland has to offer the world). What do you do?

You generally decide to follow it up with another joyous ride of catchy tracks less than two years later that will have people wrestling to scrape the last copy off the shelves, and then dig deep into their pockets to come and see you live and go broke buying your merchandise. It seems The Fratellis can do just that with a click of their fingers. At the turn of the year, there was nothing so much as a whistle in the wind from the Glasgow-based 3-piece, yet a few months on, and they’ve released a new single and, this week, a second album to follow up their double platinum debut. ‘Here We Stand’ is bursting with life and colour in every corner, yet even after the third listen it’s not charging at me like an angry bull at a Texas rodeo.

When the band released ‘Chelsea Dagger’ back in August 2006, following the release of the Arctic Monkeys’ debut, something incredible happened - British rock-n-roll was truly back with a bang. Not since the days of Oasis, The Verve and Blur have songs been cheered from the terraces of football grounds up and down the country. Britain was bursting from the seams with indie bands and it felt amazing to see those bands gracing the top of the charts once more.

However, what Jon Fratelli and Co. have learnt as a band in the last 20 or so months can only be explained by listening to new single ‘Mistress Mabel’ and album opener ‘My Friend John’. Certainly, they are unmistakably “Fratellis” but is there really anything new about them that we’ve not heard already? What was exciting about the Arctics’ second outing was that Turner had found something new and different to say; about the world and society and everything about the evolving music scene at the end of 2006. Changes were occurring, with bands like Klaxons, New Young Pony Club and CSS updating those 80s new wave/punk sounds with house/electronica beats (that was unfortunately labelled “nu-Rave” - oh, how we can sit back now and thank Klaxons’ manager and the press for that one).

What is impressive about this album, however, is how this band has dropped the cheeky pre-Wombat lyrics and got stuck in with some proper guitar music. ‘Jesus Stole My Baby’ is an epic western tragedy; the sort of song you might hear in the background as aliens from Mars invade 18th Century America - for some strange reason in my mind, it works.

Other treats include down-and-dirty ‘Tell Me A Lie’ which shows what the band may have learned about the world of music - “He’s a liar, he’s a liar, and a good one at that“. It’s the closest thing that this album comes to their it-was-never-a-single-track, ‘Creeping Up The Backstairs’. ‘Acid Jazz Singer’ passes by without much notice, but the real gem of this album is locked inside sub-six-minute track ‘Lupe Brown’ with its Clash-esque riffs and Doherty vocals. However, with the penultimate song, ‘Milk And Money’, I can’t help but think the journey has finished before it’s even begun as it tamely closes things off.

As a self-confessed indie maniac (2003-2007) I feel really let down by this record - it’s probably the first record out of my favourite British bands’ follow-ups recently that I’m genuinely disappointed with. I do have to give them credit however for trying out a variety of new sounds, but if you’re going to do that then the lyrical style should follow suit or you’re just shooting yourself in the foot. On the other hand, despite how much I’ve knocked this album, there is no question that it will sell like burgers and stars & stripes on Independence Day.

6/10

Monday 9 June 2008

Up & Coming Artists #9: Laura Marling

Laura Marling
Pop Starlet



At the age of just 18 - bloody 7 months younger than me, which is actually fookin' scary - Laura Marling has been turning heads and warming the hearts of the nation for the past year. She regularly collaborates with indie/folk-rock band Noah and the Whale and frontman to the band Charlie Fink produced her debut album 'Alas, I Cannot Swim', which was released back in February this year as she turned 18 and it peaked in the UK charts at #45; she also appeared in Later With Jools Holland around that time too.
Her debut release EP 'London Town' was released back in April 2007 to critical acclaim, which was followed up by a number of small festival shows including a slot at the Underage Festival and the O2 Wireless Festival.
She then released the 'Manic & I' EP late last year, which was followed up by the release of her first standard single 'Ghosts' to accomodate the release of her debut album.
I find her musick really really uplifting, not in the same way as Kate Nash, her lyrics are more direct, more brash, whereas Laura prefers to delight her listeners with sweet melodies and the lightest fingers to a guitar I've heard for some time.
I saw her live last year, but when she collaborated with Noah & The Whale, so I've yet to experience her live aurora; even so I was so suprised at the range of her voice, that seemed to come out of such a young face. Laura has the potential to go really far in life. She reminds me of a female version of Paul Weller at the moment, it's almost as if shes lived a huge life already before shes embarked on this journey, and that's something you can never take away from her.

I urge you to give her at least one listen, and if it should be any song then it should be 'New Romantic' which appeared on her 'My Manic & I' EP but not on her album. You can find the song here or on her MySpace.



Late last year she was once refused entry to one of her own performances because she was underage, this was at the Soho Revue Bar; so she decided to play her set out in the street instead, to a massive crowd. She has an amazing confidence for a solo artist at the age she is and if her EPs are anything to go by, I'll be taking a swipe into HMV today to buy her album!

Monday 2 June 2008

Up & Coming Artists #8: Lillica Libertine

Lillica Libertine
Dancefloor Destroyer


19 year-old Nottingham born Lillica Libertine aka Laurence Matthew Blake may not be the most conventional of filthy house artists out at the moment, but having just left school, he's quite rightly one of the hottest new electro acts in the country right now. His ability to resurrect fossilised dinosaurs buried several hundered miles beneath the earths surface with his pounding bass licks and cheeky synth bliss is only one of the reasons why he's been tearing up clubs up and down the country with his balls out electro/house anthems. A confessed UK and French House scene extrodinare, we may have just found the Daft Punk/Justice UK equivalent, and the best part is that he is only 19.
Libertine was recommended to me by fellow blogger SiD aka the Music Liberation genius and recently turned Radio One star.
Since then his tunes have been on constant repeat on my computer and recently I graced my student union during a DJ set of my own with his simply insane demo BritneySpears. Quite rightly SiD pointed out that it really doesn't sound anything like Miss Spears "unless you listen to it whilst pummelling her face in."
I'm assuming in a sexual kind of way, but that's just me.
He also seems to be quite an approchable character, and I can easily see a bigger indie label snapping him up from Place Blanche's grasp within the next year. However what's most important for Libertine at the moment is to try and score some late summer festival slots, he recently played at Brighton's Great Escape, but he's not on the bill for any of the major summer festivals. Although he is embarking on a short Australian Tour early-middle september that will hopefully branch out his listeners rather than fragment them too far. Most importantly he's got a live session with Radio One sorted that will surely finally give him the exposure he truely deserves!



What was exciting about Justice when they started out, was their exposure remained rather underground, until D.A.N.C.E ripped through the mainstream like David Cameron through red lights.
I'm hopefully going to be scoring a ticket for his support slot with Partyshank at the Camden Barfly in a couple of weeks, but for now really do check out his tunes!

SiD has posted up a few tunes (Drug Control, Diamonds and his recent first single Manhunt) that you should be able to download until this weekend so head over there.
Also head over to his MySpace; it's so well set out that the first time I visited the site, I felt a wet patch in my pants!

Here's his best work to date: BritneySpears