Always a treat to have new material from London based Alessi Laurent-Marke, especially when it’s a pre-cursor to her eagerly awaited new album (and first for Bella Union) Time Travel – due out in April. After her confident yet ill fated major label debut album Notes From A Treehouse from 2009, all went a bit quiet on the Ark front. Aside from a quietly released EP from last year, ‘Wire’ is the first new material we’ve been able to get our teeth into and, although short, it’s an incessantly sweet ditty - aided ably by the video which was directed by sometime TLOBF contributor Anika Mottershaw.

It’s Valentines Day, which probably means you’ll be spending the day in the arms of your loved one, frolicking around whilst you douse one another with heart shaped cards and whispered sweet nothings. Either that, or you’ll be moping around with a face like a spayed cat with your only thoughts of that of a lost love or one that was doomed from the very start. Lucky for both camps then that today’s session is brought to you by the seemingly sprightly Danish troupe Treefight For Sunlight who deliver something for everyone with their stunning performance of ‘What Became Of You and I?’.

For the lovers: sun-kissed harmonies, and twinkling keyboards all delivered in a perfect three and a half minute package of youthful abandonment. For the lovers scorned: the weighty lyrical underbelly, drenched in sadness and regret. Quite a feat to merge the two contrasting elements together, but Treefight do it with such effortless ease you can’t help but gaze on in pure amazement.

Their debut, self-titled album is released today via Bella Union. Read the TLOBF Recommended review here.

Session directed and filmed by Paul Bridgewater & Sebastien Dehesdin. Edited and produced by Sebastien Dehesdin.

Allow Seattle duo Thousands to take you to the shore’s edge with their debut album The Sound of Everything. With gentle harmonies, entrancing guitar lines, and the sound of calling birds in the distance, Kristian Garrard and Luke Bergman have crafted the type of dreamy acoustic folk that will transport you to a place of peace and tranquillity with every listen.

In their first ever UK interview by the power of e-mail, we talk to Thousands about the people and places that inspired The Sound of Everything, the ever-thriving music scene of Seattle and about their recent signing to Bella Union.

Thousands! How’s it going?

Luke Bergman: Hello. Good.

Kristian Garrard: It’s going well, thanks.

Where are you right now? What five things can you see?

K: We’re sitting in Cafe Racer, in Seattle; a great bar/cafe in our neighborhood. From where I sit I can see a giant portrait of Jesus made out of marshmallows, a Vespa decked out in mirror-ball squares, Shmootzie the Clod, a musician. It’s raining outside.

You’ve recently  signed to Bella Union. Congratulations! How did that come about?

K: Thanks. Our friends in the Fleet Foxes were kind enough to pass along our record to Simon Raymonde, who runs Bella Union, at some point last year. We’ve been talking with him for a long time now, and now our album is finally coming out in March!

So were you fans of Bella Union and their previous signings beforehand?

L: I hadn’t listened to many of the bands before, except for Laura Veirs and Fleet Foxes, but I have been checking the others out lately, and they’re pretty good.

K: Same here, I’ve been a fan of Laura Veirs for a long time, and of course Fleet Foxes. Lately I’ve really been getting into Beach House and Midlake. Midlake’s The Courage Of Others is on HEAVY rotation on my iPod. I’m really excited to be involved with a label that has such great bands.

Do you have a label that you are signed to over in Seattle too?

K: We’re signed to Bella Union in North America too, the CD/LP will be released here on April 26. Our album came out as a limited vinyl release here last year on a small label called Echolalic as well.

The Sound of Everything is your first release together since recording with both Heatwarmer and Born Under The Sun of Death. Did it feel strange working with each other one-on-one as opposed to having other band members around?

K: These three bands have been going on at the same time for years. Thousands has existed for about four years, but we never got our act together to record an album until recently.

L: It felt a little strange to work with each other one-on-one, but that’s just because neither of us could stop playing classic rock riffs and get anything done. After we stopped riffing so superfluously, it came very naturally.

Good job. What inspired you to work together as a duo?

K: Things just fell into place that way. We tried (not very hard) to involve drums, once, and it didn’t feel right. It’s easiest to practice in apartments in the city when your band is just two acoustic guitars. No need to make tons of noise.

L: I was a big fan of Kristian’s songs before he played with anyone else. The music is pretty sonically delicate and complex when it’s just Kristian playing, so it’s hard to work even just my parts into it. Very occasionally we get the idea for an extra instrument to be added, but normally it sounds pretty full with just us.

I see that you’re both still involved in other musical projects alongside Thousands. Do you see each of your groups as being totally separate from the last?

K: Well there isn’t so much as one, then the next, then the next. We’re both super active in the scene here. I myself play in about 5 bands, Luke probably more than that. We’re both lovers of all sorts of music, and we don’t want to be bottled into any particular style, so all the different bands allow us to express whatever it is we feel, be that quiet acoustic music, head-splitting noise, boogie-blues, etc etc.

L: Yes, each group is totally separate. I wouldn’t want to be in two bands that were similar.

Is it the norm for Seattle musicians to be involved in so many different groups then?

Both: Yes.

L: At least in our group of friends.

K: Seattle is super-saturated with musicians. I think there are probably more bands here than residents. On any given night of the week you can read listings in the paper for about 100 shows. It’s tough to get any sort of recognition in that atmosphere.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I hear that you’re both very respected within Seattle’s underground music scene. Is that how you met? What’s the story?

K: I’d say most of Seattle’s music scene is “underground”, being that the vast majority of these bands (and there are some great ones) never seem to go anywhere. Also literally, there are a lot of basement venues around town. In fact, Luke and I were at a basement show last night, seeing an awesome band called Megabog, and a few others. We met through friends at the University of Washington and connected somehow.

And you also both work as music teachers, right? And you curate sessions at a music organisation called ‘Racer Sessions?’

K: I’ve taught before, but not currently.

L: I teach in the Jazz Department at the University of Washington. The Racer Sessions is separate from education. It’s a weekly new music series that is both a compositional showcase for individuals and a session for group free improvisation. We founded it with a few other people as a way to organise and foster the burgeoning interest in new, weird music in Seattle. A different person each week writes a piece based on a theme or concept he/she wants the collective Racer Session group to explore. After the piece is over there is a time for people to improvise based on the host’s presentation. We use the term “curate,” because we wanted the weekly host to have a role larger than just performing their piece but rather taking the group to a new conceptual area, and organizing an experience that people can actively participate in. It has been amazing to see the community cultivate a way of playing and listening based on a year’s worth of weekly presentations.

So did you start Racer Sessions because you felt that you had no musical outlet in Seattle when you were growing up then? Or am I wrong? Is it the opposite?

L: Well not really. Neither of us grew up in Seattle. If anything the Racer Sessions are possible because there are so many incredible musicians in town who are open minded and supportive of each other. It is the only regular event of its kind in the city as far as I know, but I don’t know if the scene was like starved for something like this before it happened. A bunch of us just wanted to do it, so we did and people seem to be into it.

K: I moved to the Seattle area when I was in high school, and there was definitely a thriving all-ages music scene going on at that time. I was never at a loss for things to do. Vats of Blood was recording albums on a computer mic, teenagers were getting sweaty together, it was great.

You actually travelled out of Seattle to record this album, which is something that you never did with any other of your bands. Why was that?

K: We decided to do these recordings mostly outdoors to give each song a different atmosphere. We travelled around Washington and Oregon looking for quiet, inspiring places to set up our little microphone and play. This method of recording would only really lend itself to such purely acoustic music. We wanted the music to sound like it was being performed in, say, the woods, or a hayloft, as of course it was. You can hear all the sounds of birds and wind and all that in the background.

So does this mean that the album doesn’t include the sound of your hometown?

K: It does, in a way. We recorded the song ‘The Sound of Everything’ in a stairwell at the University. A couple of the songs were done inside our house, for convenience sake. I’m definitely more inspired by natural environmental sounds than say, a city bus chugging by, or a police siren. I didn’t want any of that stuff clogging up the music.

Luke, in your blog you wrote that the Northwest is known for: ‘thick forests, dismal winters, magnificently beautiful mountains, serial killers, strong beers, fog, vibrant communities, coffee, atheism, passive aggression, giant octopi, moss, suicidal pop stars, fungus, other stuff’.. It all sounds pretty oppressive… 1How have you managed to create something so gentle and easy, from such intense surroundings?

L: It’s not really oppressive. Life is easy in Seattle, and it’s an ideal place for me to be as a musician. The environment in the surrounding area is a dramatic, wild, fertile, sometimes creepy place, but it doesn’t get me down or anything. It makes me really excited. I love it here for all of those things (minus the serial killers of course). There are also things that contribute significantly to the dynamic of the area that bore me, such as boeing, Starbucks, twilight, Glenn Beck (Fox News), Sleepless in Seattle, messed up tax laws, seafood. That post was a bit slanted towards focusing on things that would optimise the effect of the piece I was presenting.

As for Thousands’ music, I think it’s still, at some level, a reaction to our environment but may not overtly match the aforementioned qualities. My post was misleading if it came across as meaning, “music must be a direct representation of its immediate region” that ignores lots of the ways that humans collect experiences. It makes sense why reggae didn’t come from Greenland, but in a diverse place with a wide range of stimuli inside and out of the natural environment, I feel inclined to make all sorts of different music. Which may be why we’re each in multiple bands.

You also wrote that it’s a place where people bottle up ‘destructive emotions’. It’s hard to imagine a whole place feeling like that…

L: Yeah. The whole place doesn’t feel like that. Those thoughts represent a snapshot of a time in my life when I was fixated on passive aggression as a regional phenomenon. I was also writing that stuff partially to rile people up to hear my piece. People “bottle up destructive emotions” everywhere in the world to some extent, right? Our region, I’m told, has the reputation for being especially passive aggressive, or at the very least, “laid back”. That general vibe may be an effect of having lots of open space and pretty easy living. Somewhere like New York City, people maybe have adapted to being more direct in their interactions because it’s the only way to get things done. You have to be hardcore to even go out and do your laundry. I was also holding up social patterns I’ve noticed next to the weather patterns in Seattle to see if there was any connection there. In the Winters, it is constant drizzly, foggy, purgatorial weather that never storms and rarely freezes. I, for one, begin to crave extremes. I’m not sure if there’s any truth behind this comparison, I was just posing the thought.

So is Thousands extremely inspired by the nature and seasons of Seattle, or extremely inspired by the people you see there every single day?

K: Definitely more on the nature side. Most of my lyrics centre round environments, and I’m inspired by all of the darkness here; the rainforests, the clouds, the bears, the ocean. People play a pretty minor role in my lyrics, where they’re mostly just the victims of their surroundings.

So has it worked out well for you, living in Seattle? I mean, in terms of it pushing you on to create something new and fresh?

K: I think so, I’m able to live in a super-cheap apartment, work only a couple days a week, and focus most of my time on creative pursuits. For that reason, Seattle is amazing. I don’t know that I’d have more trouble creating anywhere else, since I’ve never really tried it. The music isn’t any sort of escape for me. It’s just a way of understanding myself, and exploring new ideas. I hope I never start repeating myself, but so far I feel like I’m always breaking new ground in my song-writing.

L: Yeah, it’s hella chill. I also live for cheap and don’t work very much so I can make work on my music. If anything, I would think that working all the time is a way to escape from reality, it’s when you’re doing nothing that you really start to stare into the abyss.

Click here to view the embedded video.

How do you go about creating songs for Thousands? Is there a formula for your music?

K: Head-Solo-Head-Vamp out. Not really, there’s no formula. All these ideas come to me at the strangest times. I can never just sit down and crank out a song. I’m always recording little ideas into my cell phone, forgetting them, remembering later, maybe writing a song around it, maybe deleting it. The process is a complete mystery. Once I do get something finalised though, the process of arranging it for the band is just the two of us sitting in my living room, playing the same parts over and over until Luke finds the missing puzzle pieces.

L: There are only two working virtues we write music by:

1) Practice it, play it on the gig.

2) If you can’t take it upstairs, no one cares.

And who takes the lead?

K: I’m responsible for the main part of the song-writing, the lyrics, structure, etc. Luke is a pretty vital aspect of adding depth to the songs though. His parts pull together the sometimes disparate elements of a song into a pretty cohesive unit. Luke’s good at picking out themes that I didn’t know existed and making them more apparent.

L: I’m technically the lead guitarist, sometimes I’m referred to as the “Secret Weapon.”

Ha! What did you both hope to achieve when you started Thousands?

K: For a long time, I didn’t want to really “achieve” anything, other than writing some good songs, and playing them in people’s living rooms. We never went looking for normal shows or anything, and were perfectly comfortable in unconventional venues. I think this attitude is what led us to record the album in such an informal way. We were definitely not trying to create a clean, studio-style album. I’m much more of a fan of intimate home recordings, records that embrace their own flaws, or are simply unaware of them.

L: I think the goal for the music has always been to make stuff that is creatively gratifying, and also hopefully is something new and challenging to the listener. We are constantly trying to carve out a new area with each new song, so it’s always a challenge for us. As a result, the music is really fun to play and something that I can get deeply engaged with.

What other plans do you have for 2011?

K: Just building our name, hopefully touring a bunch. We have our first trip to Europe coming up, some dates around the US, and then who knows what the future holds. Hopefully we can just get busier and busier over the year.

L: Eventually it would be nice to have someone tabbing out our songs.

K: Yeah, I really want to see a YouTube video of a kid in his bedroom covering one of my songs. It’s my dream.

L: TMI

I’ll get my guitar… Any Seattle-based bands that we should check out in the meanwhile?

L: I just recorded the albums of Chemical Clock and Bad Luck. They are both incredible and unique bands. My other favourites are Wet Paint and Lonesome Shack. Also: Filth Mattress, Titpig, Punishment, Operation ID, Thunder Grey Pilgrim, anything on tableandchairsmusic.com Way too many to list.

K: Luke beat me to most of mine! One thing I’m super excited about these days is an album by our friend Andrew Conklin called If I Were More Like You. He’s based in Oakland, and is giving the record away for free on his Bandcamp site. He should really be getting rich off that thing though.

The Sound of Everything will be released on March 21 ahead of Thousands’ first UK tour which begins on March 31  in London. For more information check out their website: www.thousandsband.com.

March
31 – Slaughtered Lamb, London

April
1 – Green Door Store, Brighton
3 – The Jericho Tavern, Oxford
4 – Lee Rosy, Nottinghham
5 – Castle Hotel, Manchester
6 – Grand Social, Dublin
8 – Vic Bar, Glasgow
9 – Mello Mello, Liverpool
10 – A Nation of Shopkeepers, Leeds

In Danish culture there’s a term hygge, which roughly translates to English as something akin to tranquillity, or the pleasure derived from being around comforting things and loved ones. Imagine then, if you will, cracking open a can of famous Danish mood enhancer on a pleasantly warm summer’s evening by the river, surrounded by friends, family, nature. On the stereo is playing the self-titled debut release from Bella Union’s latest signings, Treefight for Sunlight, transporting the listening throng from a leafy Scandinavian suburb to the west coast of the USA for a late 60s beach party.

That’s the world of Treefight for Sunlight, an album of love songs to people and to nature, of sunny harmonies a world away from fellow Danes Efterklang, Mew and Raveonettes. The four piece from North Jutland have, on last count, about three lead singers and exist in a post-Animal Collective world of sunny guitar pop. This is a plus point that makes these chaps sonically a lot more interesting than musical bedfellows past and present such as The Ruby Suns, and HAL. They’ve got that epic, soaring vocal harmony sound found on the more recent releases from Animal Collective and Panda Bear, lifting the rather more traditional arrangements away from what could have been a drab experience.

The record, thankfully, feels like a direct prescription hit of serotonin, making the opening lines of the first song ‘A Dream Before Sleep’ rather prescient. “All of the nurses / are going to leave me” go the harmonious voices, leading into the world of Treefight for Sunlight. This short intro, with echoes of Mercury Rev, flows into ‘You and the New World’, all bouncing piano and Afrobeat rhythms belying the fact that it’s a song about unrequited love. Most of the songs on Treefight for Sunlight launch in on piano and keyboard sounds, and quickly build around that base, adding Byrdsian jangle, Spector-esque drums and the occasional layer of pocket symphony orchestration.

A few of the finest tracks reveal the core themes of the record: ‘They Never Did Know’, all psychedelic rock vibes, fades out on a vocal line of “You don’t really want me”, while ‘Facing the Sun’ and ‘Rain Air’ (both lovely ELO style soft rockers) focus in on nature and manage the trick of using the lyric “Trees singing in the afternoon / rain crying in the morning sun” without it sounding twee – admittedly though, it doesn’t look great written down.

Despite a couple of wrong turnings (the pointless ‘Tambourhinoceros Jam’ and ‘Riddles in Rhymes’) the band end strongly with a couple of crackers. ‘What Became of You and I’, a TLOBF Song of the Day no less, is a gorgeous feelgood anthem for the brokenhearted, and end track ‘Time Stretcher’, a mournful psych comedown, with those nurses coming back to pull the listener out of a leafy reverie.

As a debut, Treefight for Sunlight is an extremely promising start for these young Danes. A broadening of their palette might help, along with being less unremittingly cheerful, but having said that – and it might just be the fog and gloom of the opening months of the year working on me – this record makes me feel happy.

Having recorded her debut album at the tender age of 17, Alessi Laurent-Marke is back with her sophomore album Time Travel. Due for release on April 25 via Bella Union Records, Alessi’s Ark‘s next batch of tender folk songs were partly recorded in Brighton’s Electric Studios with Wilkommen Collective’s Marcus Hamblett. You can listen to her new track ‘The Wire’ below.

On a night where the icy sea wind cut straight to the bone, Denmark’s Treefight For Sunlight seemed intent on warming the bodies and hearts of those who had braved the cold to see them open up for new labelmates The Walkmen.

Where their tourbuddies have been plying their trade in one form or other since the early nineties, the Danes are just wrapping up their first UK tour. Three part harmonies coo over nimble basslines that propel the band forward. It’s in turns heavy, bouncy, and joyful, guitars and baroque piano entwining and unraveling over the course of the songs.

There’s also a large amount of prog-rock thrown into the mix, no more so than on their closing song, as organs built and drummer Mathais Sorensen crashed around his kit with ever increasing urgency before collapsing into a more restrained passage then building up again, all with liberal use of the mighty shaky egg. The band grinned as they left the stage, as did the audience.

As Hamilton Leithauser and his fellow New Yorkers took the smoke shrouded stage in their casual suits, the mood seemed to turn a little darker. After almost two decades in the business, the members of The Walkmen have got their art pretty nailed on, and it is hard to fault the musicianship on display throughout the show, be it Paul Maroon’s waltzing guitar figures, or Walter Martin’s organ and triangle skills.

However it was the tall figure of Leithauser that drew the eye most. Striding around the stage, wrapping the microphone lead around his arm, he seemed like a hardcore singer in slow-motion. Coiled up and impassioned, on many occasions he let out almost primal, larynx shredding howls. It’s an impressive sight to behold, and, although used frequently, the band are careful not to overkill it. Leithauser intermittently straps on a guitar to add some twang, and takes the intensity down a notch for ‘When I Shovel Snow’, before he croons soulfully on ‘Canadian Girl”, proving, if proof were needed, that he can do tender and emotional as well as powerful and forceful.

It’s an accomplished and well paced show that covers all of the bands releases and demonstrates how The Walkmen have allowed themselves the time and space to develop into a powerful and engaging live force over the years.

A slice of really exciting news for you all this already dark Monday afternoon, Fleet Foxes have revealed details of their second album and are offering the title track up for free via their website. The greatly anticipated follow up to 2008’s critically acclaimed eponymous debut; Helplessness Blues is due for release on May 2 via Bella Union. Recorded over the course of a year, their sophomore twelve-track is set to coincide with a tour on both sides of the Atlantic. You can listen to the effortlessly stunning forthcoming title track below.

April
30 – The Vogue Theatre, Vancouver

May
1 – Crystal Ballroom, Portland
3 – Moore Theatre, Seatlle
5 – Fox Theatre, Oakland
6 – Spreckels Theatre, San Diego
7 – Hollywood Palladium, Hollywood
8 – Rialto Theatre, Tuscon
10 – Stubbs Waller Creek Amphitheatre, Austin
11 – Palladium Ballroom, Dallas
13 – Ryman Auditorium, Nashville
14 – The Tabernacle, Atlanta
15 – DAR Constitutional Hall, Washington DC
17 – Orpheum Theatre, Boston
18 – The United Palace Theatre, New York
21 – Tower Theatre, Upper Darby
25 – Astra, Berlin
26 – Dachau Summer of Music, Munich
28 – Primavera Sound, Barcelona
30 – Bataclan, Paris
31 – Hammersmith Apollo, London

Tickets for the Hammersmith Apollo will go on-sale at 9am on Friday 4 February.

”I’m going in for hibernation” is the opening line of the aptly-titled ‘Hibernation’, a track that belongs to new Bella Union signing Heidi Spencer and The Rare Birds debut LP Under Streetlight Glow. It also pretty much summarises the overall sentiment I have in regards to this record. Listening to this debut, is a sleepy, midly enjoyable but ultimately one-tone pleasure. One that has its moments but the majority of time, it just passes you by.

There’s no two ways about it, this debut is extremely monochrome in both its pace and sound, with the album staying very true to the classic country arrangement; acoustic guitar and melodic piano, and only just leaning within a whisker of differentiation throughout the 38 minutes. It’s not that this structure of song isn’t impressive, if anything the album starts off promisingly with Spencer’s bittersweet and slight husky drawl working hand in glove with her lament lyrics.

Indeed, they’re lyrics formed of beautiful simplicity: ”I’m watching you sit there with your secrets and your shadows/ Sharing your sins with that bottle”, and focus mainly on topic of love - the pejorative experiences and aspects of the four letter word. But as the album progresses, the complete lack of scope, both lyrical and musically, becomes gradually more and more evident, and what at the beginning was enjoyable ends up being unforgivably insipid. As great as some of these tracks may be, it’s incredibly naive or mis-judged of Heidi and the Rare Birds to think that this type of one-direction-only lovelorn song is enough to keep a debut afloat.

What’s slightly more annoying  is when the LP does take a chance it’s all the better for it, the string section on ‘Tired and True’ is genuinely heartbreaking and gives her catharsis another dimension, and the small increase of momentum on ‘Whiskey’ is a successful detour from her aforementioned sound. There’s no doubt that there is promise and potential, it’s just a shame that it isn’t used to maximum effect.

With 2011 well and truly underway it is with great excitement that we can share the news of Bella Union’s latest signing. Brought to the label’s attention by Fleet Foxes‘ guitarist Skye Skjelset, the Seattle based duo Kristian Garrard and Luke Bergman make the gentlest of folk music under the moniker of Thousands. Ahead of the release of their debut album, The Sound of Everything, on March 14, you can listen to a few tender, earnest and fragile melodies via the band’s website.

Look out for an exclusive Introducing interview at The Line Of Best Fit soon.

Recorded in a single live take around a handful of microphones, here’s the first taster from the forthcoming album by The Low Anthem. You can almost feel the cold lingering in the air of the videos “Pasta Sauce Factory” location; ghostly piano chords reverberating throughout the skeletal frame of the song with only a lonesome clarinet and three-way harmony keeping the whole thing upright. A band fascinated with tone and timbre; ‘Ghost Woman Blues’ is nothing short of breathtaking and a tantalising peak at one of early 2011′s most eagerly awaited releases.

Download a free mp3 of ‘Ghost Woman Blues’ below. The forthcoming album, Smart Flesh, is released via Bella Union on February 21.

Having brought us the warm, breathy ambience of their critically acclaimed third album at the beginning of this year, dream pop duo Beach House have released a brand new song for the winter season. Listen to the unique lulls of Victoria Legrand’s voice soar about above the festive twangs and sweeping organ driven melody of ‘I Do Not Care for the Winter Sun’ below.

Beach House: ‘I Do Not Care For The Winter Sun’

With their forthcoming album Smart Flesh due for release next February, The Low Anthem have just announced a string of UK dates. Taken from the Rhode Islanders new record, ‘Ghost Woman Blues’ is an elegant, earthly and sweeping piece that is available to download for free.

April
7 – Oran Mor, Glasgow
8 – St Philip’s Church, Manchester
10 – Vicar Street, Dublin
11 – Queen Elizabeth Hall, London

Photographs by Valerio Berdini.

After spending much of 2010 being on the quiet side, Glasgow’s beloved experimental folk-pop troupe My Latest Novel have announced a very special hometown Christmas show – taking place at King Tuts Wah Wah Hut on December 28.

This will be the first show the band have played since the departure of founding member Laura McFarlane; surely a huge shift in the bands dynamic, but one they’re taking to their advantage says Gary Deveney: “We’ve been working on new songs, and also bringing back some of the old ones we hadn’t played for a while. The last few months have been really busy for us. We’ve been recording lots of new songs ourselves, and enjoying the writing process more and more. We’re hoping to have an albums worth ready for some time in 2011… The hope is to play three of the new songs at King Tuts (‘What’s The Secret Eugene’ and ‘The Weather Song’ for definite and hopefully one other).”

Tickets for the show are on sale now priced at £7.50 and available direct from the King Tuts website.

A rather exciting proposition to emerge from Denmark; Treefight For Sunlight are the latest signing to to Bella Union and ‘What Became Of You and I’ the first taster of what we can expect from their self-titled debut album, due out February 14 next year.

The sunny exterior that radiates throughout the songs four minutes is something slightly askew to the normal breed of Danish bands. What with Mew, Our Broken Garden, Chimes and Bells, The Raveonettes and The Kissaway Trail all taking darker (albeit totally different) paths – Treefight For Sunlight embrace a wealth of sixties styled harmonies; chock full of west coast vibes and gleaming pop hooks. It’s sprightly stuff indeed and if this first taster is anything to go by, these young Danes could be one of 2011′s brightest new offerings. Stream / download below.

The Rhode Island four-piece The Low Anthem have announced their second Bella Union/Nonesuch release is due out February 21 2011. Recorded in an abandoned factory on the band’s home turf, Smart Flesh is set to follow the swelling folk harmonies of 2009’s breakthrough album Oh My God, Charlie Darwin.

The recording space, the array of instruments and the band’s experimental techniques have apparently resulted in some chilling moments that resonate throughout the album. If the songs within come anywhere close to the stunning soundscapes of previous efforts Smart Flesh is sure to be one of the most hotly anticipated releases of the spring.

At a certain point during tonight’s Midlake show, my mind entirely wandered inside itself. Lost inside the lulling tones of ‘Acts of Man’, I started an inner conversation about the nature of criticism with regard to live music.

To whit: just where does objectivity stand? Am I reviewing Midlake? The entire show? The sound? Or am I reviewing my emotional response to these elements? Is a review primarily of a show or of my experience therein?

Should there be a balance? And if so, please tell me, dear reader, what the fuck it is?

We are in a strange place for music writing right now. We’ve gone from an age of intensely personal, guerilla prose through an era of the sardonic, dry and vital alongside the overtly intellectual, and now – in a world where blogs have a growing currency – the amateur prose of bedroom fanboys is gaining a place, good or bad, in the stylistic pantheon. From the personal to the detached and back to the personal again with bells on.

This is what happens when I’m so overwhelmed by music. It digs within me, unearths debate, moves me to hyperbole. Sometimes I feel guilty about this and questions like, “should I do cold and removed or over-emotive and abstract,” rise to the surface.

The answer is not really a choice for me. There are those able to plough on through that surge of emotion and provide something that’s objective because that’s what the editorial demands. It’s a skill and I’m not one of those people; I believe that the greatest music (or live execution thereof) transforms us into philosophers, lovers, fighters.  So this is how I relate and I believe it’s a method that has the possibility to reveal more about the true value and success of a show, a song, a band than objectivity could ever do.

Of course these preceding lines should tell you everything you need to know about tonight’s show - Midlake show themselves to be at the top of their game, aided by a stellar cast of support acts and a lush catalogue of songs.

Before the fireworks, Jason Lytle – he of Grandaddy – reels off a slyly confident stripped down set that reminds me just what a neat little band they were after all. Next up, John Grant – inextricably linked to tonight’s headliners by their collaboration on his debut record (and label affiliation) – gains a bundle of new fans with a similarly minimal set up. It’s a tight setlist touching on both his skill as a songwriter and an every growing vocal range on cathartic songs like ‘Queen of Denmark’, the title track of his record.

If the critical success of their breakthrough The Trials of Van Occupanther LP wasn’t matched by similar acclaim for this year’s The Courage of Others, it didn’t really matter. Every song tonight was a precisely controlled symphony of voice and instrument. While I believe that The Courage of Others demands more from the listener on record to really work, such dynamics weren’t required at The Roundhouse. ‘Acts of Man’ was dramatic and beautifully woefull, as was a stirring ‘Head Home’.

The apex of what they can do is still embodied in ‘Roscoe’ – pulling emotions in the Roundhouse crowd like no other song tonight. Grown men blink back the birthings of tears. Some of them scream plaudits: “The greatest fucking band in the world”. It’s dramatic and intense.

They encore takes a more relaxed, familial tone, with Lytle stepping up to front a performance of ‘Am 180′, arguably Grandaddy’s greatest moment. Fanboys go wide-eyed to my left and right, nudging their respective girlfriends in the ribs, blabbering about how it’sthegreatesongeverwritten and “you know it/you do/I played it to you last week/I used to dance to this all the time/ohmygod it’s sooooo incredible”. Grant’s blustery take on his former band The Czar’s ‘Paint The Moon’ follows.

Objectively and critically speaking, this was a fine show. Press me and I’d probably say it was fifteen minutes too long and, according to the technical fanboys on the front, the “bass was too loud in the mix”. But to my ears and my mind and my heart, it was amongst the most memorable and soul-nourishing I’ve been to this year. I’m an existentialist at heart and yet great music, somehow, manages to make me see God. Funny that.

With his finger in numerous musical pies – having worked with the likes of Efterkland and She & Him to name just two – it was anyone’s guess what Peter Broderick would do for us when we turned up to film him at St Giles in the Fields.

Amongst the ornate interiors, he gave us the charmingly awesome ‘The Book She Wrote And In The Time’ – something of an exclusive right now as it’s not yet available on any record.

Broderick’s recent ‘mini-album’, the TLOBF Recommended How They Are came out in September on Bella Union.

Special thanks to Anika Mottershaw for filming this for us.

Andrew Bird is no ‘one trick pony’.  His previous three albums provide many reasons to become enthralled.  They’ve got enigmatic lyrics filled with historical references and non-sequiturs.  They’ve got chirpy, musical singing.  They’ve got the wide range of beautiful noises he coaxes from his violin.  They’ve even got cheeky whistling.

On Useless Creatures Bird casts most of his hallmarks aside, and takes a bold step into the unknown.  Gone are the lyrics, the singing, even most of the whistling.  Originally released as a ‘bonus’ accompaniment to Bird’s charming 2009 work Noble Beast, Useless Creatures is an expansive album of diverse instrumental experiments.

So who does this Bird fellow think he is? Doesn’t he know that you can’t just wander aimlessly into instrumental music, you need to decide on your raison d’etre!  Are you a follower of Music For Airports like Stars of the Lid out to provide drones which calm and distance listeners from the hub-bub of the world? Are you an ‘experimental’, like Fennesz, challenging people with new and unfamiliar tones?  Are you making modern classical music like Nyman, or IDM like Aphex Twin, or jazzy post-rock like Tortoise? Or are you just jamming?

Mr. Bird doesn’t march under any of these broad genre conventions.  This is no bad thing. Instead Useless Creatures is a touching album, very organic and self-fulfilling, and very Andrew Bird.  The songs expand as if growing in whatever direction the wind blows. At times, particularly on the incredible ‘Carrion Suite’ the music is tender and beautiful, like the wind blowing through long grass.  At other times, such as on the equally incredible ‘You Woke Me Up’ and the brief but attention-grabbing ‘Spinnet’ the same wind blows and stirs flocks of frenetic birds which circle and dive and weave in seemingly random patterns.  Now and again breezes blow in from foreign climes on ‘Hot Math’ and ‘Nyatiti’, while on ‘The Barn Tapes’ the world pauses entirely while the orchestra tunes up and vacuum cleaners buzz idly around the trees.  There are ambient moments, and experimental moments, and at some points you might even swear that you were listening to chamber music of old; but the sum of these parts is distinctly Bird. Useless Creatures comes out sounding like an instrumental version of its sister record Noble Beast, only, you know, with different songs. These are the same kind of noises just in a very different context.

Each diverse movement of Useless Creatures is a manifestation of the same inquisitive fingers creeping through the album, feeling out the paths of their growth. The aimlessness of the music frees it from the burden of being something, or meaning something, or achieving anything.  This is not Music For Airports nor, as it could quite easily have been, Music for Elevators. This is Music for Summer Evenings, Nowhere In Particular.  If you are not an Andrew Bird fan, best not start here.  But if you have abandoned yourself to his whimsy then this is a lovely little detour to take.

Our Broken Garden returned with their second album which was released last week on Bella Union. Watch the rather gorgeous video for stand-out track ‘Garden Grow’…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Ah, The Walkmen. Let’s get it out of the way shall we? Best known for ‘The Rat’ and for, on the whole, not writing any other songs that are quite of that calibre, but then that takes us back to the old Joseph Heller quote regarding why he hadn’t written another book as good as Catch 22; “Who has?”

For those who have bothered to look closer, then maybe it’s fairer to say that The Walkmen have always been capable of moments of brilliance. Sometimes, however, these moments sit on albums which are a little more disjointed, aloof works that at times struggle to hold together as a whole. 2008′s You and Me came closer than ever to the mix of atmosphere and cohesion which the band appear to have been striving for and now Lisbon sees them release their most accomplished set to date.

Once again, front man Hamilton Leithauser’s rasping growl is the focal point of everything The Walkmen do, and his voice is remarkable for being at once so distinct and at the same time able to change character and mood from song to song. The opening croon of “Your someone else, tomorrow night/doesn’t matter to me” of ‘Juveniles’ sets the scene for Hamilton, the heroic loser, and though there are moments of rage and openings to unleash venom, unlike on previous records the indignation and frustration is focused on his own failings. Take ‘Victory’ – an ode to letting that moment slip through your fingertips, its chorus with its wail of “Victory – right beside me/Victory should be mine”, while ‘Woe is Me’ does self pity with gusto and a hint of vitriol.

But, as was increasingly apparent on You and Me, it’s the quieter more tender moments that can be even more intriguing; ‘Blue as your Blood’ is gorgeously measured and is followed by the horn drenched waltz of ‘Stranded’ as Leithauser opens with another gloriously defeated line;“throw another dime in me my friend/and I’ll sing another song for you”. The former features some twanging Sun records guitar work and this ultra-treble clang is integral to the record, popping up on ‘All My Great Designs’.

Some hardcore fans may miss the sinister overtones that were more apparent on previous albums but despite it’s themes of disappointment and defeat Lisbon is an utter triumph, a record that has enough hooks to keep you coming back and delivers to an extent the band haven’t managed previously.

Beautiful women, according to popular wisdom, do not need to develop a personality, because men will talk to them regardless.

This theory has some logic to it, though it almost certainly isn’t true.  Can we become so accomplished in one field (our looks, our career, our hobbies) that we neglect our development elsewhere?  Are we such talented jugglers that we never bother to learn to ride the unicycle?

Our Broken Garden, the solo project of Danish artist Anna Bronsted, might be an example of this quandary.  Bronsted might be such a talented singer that she has forgotten to tend to the other aspects of her music.

Now let’s get one thing clear from the outset, Golden Sea is by no measure a terrible album, but it is almost certainly not as good as it could or should be. At its best, on tracks such as ‘The Departure’, ‘Warriors of Love’, and ‘The Darkred Roses’, Bronsted adopts the elegant reverbed piano and synths of Hail to the Thief-era Radiohead, the careful dynamic shifts of Labradford or Sigur Ros, and her beautiful voice which is reminiscent of Beach House’s Victoria Legrand.  The overall effect is something akin to The School of Seven Bells, only a whole lot more weary of the world.

Where Bronsted runs into trouble it is due to a combination of incongruous instrumentation (witness the rasping guitar solo on ‘Garden Grow’) unimaginative treatment of her vocals (reverb, reverb and more reverb) and the uneventful pacing of the album as a whole (slow and brooding is the name of the game).

The most consistently problematic element of the instrumentation is the drums, which seem to have been added as an afterthought.  While percussion can rarely make an album, they can quite easily detract from one.  Throughout Golden Sea the pragmatically programmed drums plod along with little more than a kick and a snare as if trying to pull the solemn pace of the vocals and strings unceremoniously forward without any real attempt to add to the intensity of the music.  On a few occasions, most notably on ‘The Fiery and Loud’ the drums seem to progress at an altogether different pace from the rest of the song.  On ‘The Burial’, an otherwise austere track, the kick, snare, toms and handclaps appear to have been lifted straight from a Michael Jackson album.

While the drums are the most obvious mis-step, the entire album has a feeling of being a few weeks short of completion.  The guitars, the strings, the synths, are all relatively simplistic and just don’t feel like they have been chosen with love or care.  Moreover the whole album is so firmly rooted in the treble that eventually it becomes grating; this is definitely one to avoid for those suffering from tinnitus.  This is a pity, because for a few brief moments Golden Sea has the promise of a beautiful marriage between ambient electronica, slightly gothic pop and soaring vocals.  Perhaps this is what happens when you are blessed with a voice which is just too good.

After what might be described as a difficult debut album, Our Broken Garden have emerged from their cloud ridden and dense Danish forest with Golden Sea. A quantum leap forward musically, it actually feels as though OBG have found a sound that suits them, that taps into their own particular mystique.

‘The Departure’ is the opening song, and it’s a perfect scene setter for the rest of the album. The glorious palatial and cosmic density of it is mesmerising. There feels like acres of space around the vocals, the simple piano refrain sounds epic, despite being so simple. Anna Brønsted’s vocals, filled with reverb, drift and float around the music, weaving a hypnotic dance, lulling you into a trance-like state.

Our Broken Garden: ‘The Departure’

Over the course of the last two years, Abe Vigoda have slowly, drip by drip, detached themselves from a record that blew many a grown human being’s mind. Skeleton was as unafraid as an album gets, frenetically parting pieces together to form a punk rock gem, never pulling its punches. It harboured a sound so unique that to shake it off entirely would be stupid, practically offering a new band the chance to pick up the pieces and claim it for themselves. Crush, naturally, casts an eye over at its predecessor, at times succumbing to its bold method, but apart from that, Ave Vigoda bring forth one of the boldest re-inventions of a band over the past 12 months, when a shake up wasn’t even required.

It comes as a sigh of a relief when you consider the first post-Skeleton step for the four-piece came in the shape of ‘Reviver’; a well-constructed EP priding itself on invention but quite crucially, lacking in the hooks and infectiousness that charged the previous effort. It came across like a backroom project; experimentation that the band felt they ought to share with fans. The response was largely subdued.

But in first single ‘Throwing Shade’ and its companions comes not just re-invention but also progression. In amongst the undying love for hooks comes a musicality that found itself unable to shine through in the group’s last two albums (the aforementioned ‘Skeleton’ and debut ‘Kid City’) as well as a tuned-in application of electronics. The complexity of it all is at first, completely overwhelming. One listen in and you appreciate what’s before you – both the ambitiousness and the sheer scale of it all – but to get your head around it all at once is asking too much.

Give it four, five takes and by that time the melodies, shrouded in a playlike energy, begin to pierce through the gaping hole, standing out, side by side like storm clouds. The minimalism of synth-formed ‘Repeating Angel’; the erratic structure of closer ‘We Have To Mask’; the stripped-down simplicity of ‘Pure Violence’ all begin to piece together, forming an album that can’t be lambasted for its pursuit of the new.

The spotlight falls upon Michael Vidal, a characteristic vocalist who until now, didn’t quite expose himself as the vital piece holding it all together. On Skeleton his voice kept a steady, un-jolted pace, ignoring the frenzy that spun its web around his words. Crush continues to show Vidal fitting the mood, set by his bandmates, with perfection. His low, downbeat tones morph into short, passionate cries in ‘To Tears’. During ‘Repeating Angel’ his syllables are stretched within their tether, drawn out and bordering on slurred, purring the declarative; “you are my, consequential girl” with vigor and snarl. It’s on ‘Crush’ that the leader of the pack becomes the most essential part of this labyrinth.

Vidal’s taciturn personality on ‘Throwing Shade’ is met with a simple, house drum pattern. That’s as uncharacteristic as Abe Vigoda could possibly get. Gerrardo Guerrero’s departure of drummer would explain that. Perhaps the addition of Dave Chadwick, who seemingly draws influence from different quarters than his prototype, has given the band the base from which to evolve on.

For ‘Throwing Shade’ hinted at just how dramatic a change in sound there could be in Crush. An in truth, yes, what follows is a 40 minute extension of the first single. Handpick any song in fact and you’ve just about got the ethos of Crush sewn up in one. Track by track, you’re left on the edge of your seat, because each song could realistically go anywhere at any point. And the same can be said for Abe Vigoda and their future. This album sweeps away the cobwebs of previous ideas, introducing a dozen new outlooks. Vidal and co. now have the option of picking and choosing whichever mood/pace/atmosphere suits them best. This versatile outfit can work with pretty much anything, so the future looks promising.

According to Marcel Marceau “Music and silence combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music”. I read this quote recently and although initially I wasn’t sure how to interpret the clumsy phrasing, I immediately liked the sentiments which it seemed to express. Silence is full of the kind of tiny idiosyncratic sonic shifts which epitomise great music, the bottomless echo of subtly unravelling layers can make silence the most poignant of sounds when captured within the right context; it becomes another instrument, a new and powerful means of expression. Peter Broderick pretty much nails the context on How They Are to provide arguably his most emotive work to date. This ‘stop-gap’ mini-album was, unusually for Broderick, built entirely around the lyrics, which were written during a period of recuperation following knee surgery late last year. After finding inspiration in the words themselves he set about providing them with simple instrumentation free from electronic trickery.

I don’t want to overstate the use of silence here but there is a very spacious quality to the production. Even in it’s few more frantic moments it’s as though the sounds are simply piercing the solemnity, like the noise of something clattering to the ground in an empty church. This image is certainly in line with the relatively confessional nature of Broderick’s lyrics here, like he is excising his demons with the only the most delicate of paeans accompanying his catharsis. The most striking example is on opening track Sideline, the first 90 seconds of which is entirely a’capella; it’s a bold opening gambit from someone predominantly known for instrumental works but it makes the first disparate piano chords infinitely more beautiful when they do arrive. The track’s minimal arrangement is a pleasure to behold, and most artists would struggle to wring such emotion from so few elements. The deft lyricism excels things though, with which there seems to be a sense of isolation communicated throughout; “No one likes the guy who points from the sideline / and I’ve been on the sideline a while”. Similarly on ‘Hello to Nils’ (presumably a reference to friend and collaborator Nils Frahm) he bemoans what seems his lack of a consistent home “First I’m here and then I’m there\then I’m here and then I’m there…. I say goodbye too often”. A drop in to complete silence for a good ten seconds or so later in the track serves to heighten the emotional impact of these lyrics even further on their return.

The tracks here manage to combine the more accessible arrangements of material on Home with the cinematic sense of expression which was most apparent on ballet score Music For Falling From Trees. The rich piano of ‘When I’m Out’ builds subtly to something approaching a crescendo, with the more frenetic melody being reminiscent of Chily Gonzales’ Solo Piano work albeit with a touch more delicacy. Whilst ‘Guilt’s Tune’ allows an outlet for Broderick’s more folky tendencies with a tender picked guitar line underpinned with spacious piano, which offers the perfect canvas to espouse a spoken word piece. The brief allegorical tale of a woman attempting to apologise to a duck for spitting in it’s face demonstrates a wry humour but is also shot through with a sense of pathos and ties in with the sense of isolation expressed elsewhere to form a strangely evocative piece.

Alongside his work over the last year with the likes of Efterklang, She & Him and Machinefabriek this has shown yet again that Broderick is capable of turning his hand to many musical forms, and whilst he may only be a relatively minor footnote in popular music culture right now, I feel his influence and the regard in which his music is held can only continue to increase over time. With his apparent new love for lyricism How They Are may well be an important point in this fruitful career and I would advise anyone to join the rapidly expanding group of fans who seek out everything he does, because frankly he’s yet to release a single thing which could be considered anything less than wonderful.

A few weeks ago, I was excited to read an article in which the writer documented listening to a band with no preconceptions. It is a testament to the difficulty of this task that I cannot remember even one of his methods. On the several occasions I hit play on Familial, I attempted some bias-destroying imagination exercises, but the truth of it is that in order to listen to any album without bias, you have to be completely oblivious to what you are hearing. Whilst it is easy enough not to recall his previous work as soon as the album starts (musically, it couldn’t be all that much further away) there is always that voice in the back of your mind reminding you that you have heard the peaks of this man’s talent. It would be difficult to say anything about Phil Selway’s debut solo album without first acknowledging that huge elephant in the room.

Opener ‘By Some Miracle’ immediately sets the mood for the next thirty minutes. Pleasant vocals and simple melodies on top of unremarkable acoustic guitar lines with little lyrical exploration beyond what the titles predict. It is often only the production – the warmth of the double bass intro to ‘The Ties That Bind Us’, for instance, or the way in which his voice on ‘Broken Promises’ resonates with such clarity that it places him right there in the room with you – that stops you from ignoring the songs altogether. With such stripped back arrangements, the songwriting doesn’t often old its own.

The sparse percussion, handled here not by Selway but by Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche, truly stands out rather than being impressive by comparison to the other elements of the music. The snare on ‘A Simple Life’ throws the initial vibe of the song from coffee shop singer-songwriter to a uniquely English dreariness before the song culminates with one of the only real crescendos of the album, whilst electronic volume swells on ‘Beyond Reason’ and what sounds like a marble dropping on a table on ‘Patron Saint’ are the sort of unpredictable yet unintrusive embellishments you’d expect of a percussionist of Kotche’s calibre.

Although there will be moments when ‘Don’t Look Down’s “What we see in the cold light can scare us all / All our fears will lessen in time” or closer ‘The Witching Hour’s repetition of “Those I love will carry me home” will be heartbreakingly apt, I doubt Phil Selway’s debut album will be the first place many people will think of to look for comfort, and comfort is the only thing this album could ever really provide.

Bands today are far too young. Having recently crossed the boundary from “early twenties” to “decrepit” it’s frankly depressing to watch these kids come along with their enthusiasm and vitality and achieve more artistically in thirty minutes than I have in my life to date. Avi Buffalo are a case in point: they look about twelve, yet have the professionalism and talent to put a band thrice their age to shame. Hailing from California, they’ve got that West Coast vibe almost every band from that state’s obliged to appropriate, but unlike many of their contemporaries there’s more to them than laid-back wooziness. Yeah, there’s times where they sound a bit like Real Estate (with a dash of Department of Eagles), but they’re able to shift into Wilco-esque alt-country territory with ease. By the end of their set, they’re unleashing ferocious squalls of noise with impunity. That they’re able to segue between styles with such confidence and elan is to their immense credit, especially as they’ve had to make do without their (recently-departed) keyboardist, and one suspects that it won’t be long until Avi Buffalo are headlining venues of this size in their own right.

Needless to say, The Walkmen had a lot to live up to. Like The National, they’re a band that on paper shouldn’t impress as much as they do. Apart from the emotional intensity of their respective vocalists there’s little that immediately suggests they will deliver a particularly memorable experience. Then again, Hamilton’s Leithauser’s anguished howl truly is spectacular- similar to Dan Boeckner’s, its sheer rock ‘n roll rawness is electrifying to behold. One can only imagine what his vocals chords must feel like the next morning – I suspect swallowing a cheese-grater dipped in acid would be a walk in the park in comparison. Whilst the rest of the band offer little in the way of instrumental razzmatazz, they’re excellent at what they do (the upright piano during ‘In The New Year’ was particularly effective) and while they naturally focus on new album Lisbon, there’s still ample room for ‘The Rat’. It’s rare nowadays for guitar-centric indie rock to hold my attention, but The Walkmen are exceptional in their field – a band even greater than the sum of their already impressive parts. And, pleasingly, a lot older than I am. HA.

Pictures courtesy of Minh Le

A nice treat for an otherwise miserable Friday afternoon. Baltimore’s  favourite son and daughter Alex Scally and Victoria Legrand of Beach House return with brand new song ‘White Moon’ – lifted off their new iTunes Sessions EP which will see the full light of day on September 13.

The six-track digital only EP includes re-workings of ‘Walk in the Park’, ‘Norway’, ‘Silver Soul’, and ‘Real Love’ from this years critically lauded Teen Dream plus fan-favourite ‘Gila’ from Devotion, the band’s 2008 release. All songs were recorded as a live session in one room with Victoria Legrand on keys and vocals, Alex Scally on guitar, bass pedals and vocals, and Daniel Franz on drums. The session was produced and mixed by Beach House and Chris Coady.

Alex Scally of Beach House:

We recorded these six songs after touring for 12 straight weeks. Whenever we are asked to record stripped-down versions of our songs, we cringe, because for us this means that all of the subtlety and attention to detail will be lost, and a rich song will be turned into a bland, generic song. So, when iTunes offered to have us record a stripped-down live session, we were very hesitant. We found out that we could record with our friend Chris Coady, and we agreed, believing we might be able to make it meaningful. During the week or two of sound-checks leading up to the recording, we worked through the songs and attempted to rewrite them with fewer and different tones. Listeners can judge whether or not we were able to make these ‘stripped-down’ versions mean something.

Beach House will return to these shores in November…

Friday 19 November – MANCHESTER – Manchester Cathedral (£14)
Saturday 20 November – GLASGOW – Oran Mor (£15)
Tuesday 23 November – LONDON – Shepherd’s Bush Empire (£14)
Wednesday 24 November – BRISTOL – Trinity (£12.50)
Thursday 25 November – BRIGHTON – Concorde 2 (£12)

If the Coen Brothers had decided to make Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? a decade later, it’s a pretty safe bet to suggest that Vermont based trio Mountain Man would be the obvious choice to take over the mantel of old-timers Emmy Lou Harris, Gillian Welch and Alison Kraus during the movie soundtrack highlight ‘Didn’t Leave Nobody but the Baby’. Echoes of the films plaintive accapella chants and heartbreaking Appalachian folk are strewn across Mountain Man’s debut Made The Harbor, however on ‘Play It Right’ – a brand new song filmed last month in the darkest depths of East London – we see the all-girl group reaching for a more R&B based tone.

Made The Harbor is out now via Bella Union.

Mountain Man will be playing shows throughout the UK beginning this Wednesday (25 August) with label mates The Low Anthem…

We’re giving away FIVE pairs of tickets for the St. Giles show on Thursday 2 September. To win a pair, simply email competition@thelineofbestfit.com with the subject line: GIMME MOUNTAIN MAN – we’ll randomly select five winners from our virtual hat. Winners will be contacted via email. Closing date is Wednesday 1 September @ 5pm.

Wednesday 25 August – BRIGHTON – Komedia (with The Low Anthem)
Thursday 26 August – YORK – Pocklington Arts Centre (with The Low Anthem)
Saturday 28 August – INVERNESS – Bogbain Farm (with The Low Anthem)
Sunday 29 August – ABERDEEN – The Tunnels (with The Low Anthem)
Monday 30 August – EDINBURGH – Queens Hall (with The Low Anthem)
Wednesday 1 September – BRISTOL – Colston Hall (with Jonsi)
Thursday 2 September – LONDON – St. Giles (£10 – Headline Show)
Saturday 4 September – IRELAND – Electric Picnic
Sunday 5 September – GLASGOW – Academy (with Jonsi)
Monday 6 September – MANCHESTER – Academy (with Jonsi)
Wednesday 8 September – LEEDS – Academy (with Jonsi)
Thursday 9 September – BIRMINGHAM – Academy (with Jonsi)
Saturday 11 September – ISLE OF WIGHT – Bestival
Sunday 12 September – DORSET – End of the Road Festival
Monday 13 September – BOURNEMOUTH – Academy (with Jonsi)
Tuesday 14 September – BRIGHTON – Dome (with Jonsi)
Wednesday 15 September – LONDON – Campire Trails at the Troxy (with The Felice Brothers)

Beach House have announced a series of UK dates for this coming November. The band are about to head out on a North American tour with Vampire Weekend… those kids are going to have a shock…

November
19 MANCHESTER – Manchester Cathedral
20 GLASGOW – Oran Mor
23 LONDON – Shepherd’s Bush Empire
24 BRISTOL – Trinity
25 BRIGHTON – Concorde 2

The band that can’t stay away from UK shores, Midlake, have announced a series of dates for this coming Autumn. Including another date in Cambridge. I’m very happy.

October
31 EXETER – Lemon Grove

November
01 NORWICH – UEA
02 LONDON – Roundhouse
05 OXFORD – Academy
06 LEICESTER – 02 Academy
10 CAMBRIDGE – Junction

The Walkmen have announced details of their sixth studio album, including a new UK home on Bella Union records.

Lisbon will be released on the 11th October this year, and is the follow-up to the ace You & Me.

The album was recorded in two instalments – the first at NY’s Gigantic Studios with You & Me engineer Chris Zane and in a couple of sessions in Dallas, TX with John Congleton who produced albums by St. Vincent and Explosions In The Sky.

Catch the band live in the coming months…

August
25 LONDON – Islington Academy **(SOLD-OUT!)**
27 LEEDS – Leeds Festival
28 READING – Reading Festival

October
28 GLASGOW – 02 Academy (with The Black Keys)
30 NEWCASTLE – 02 Academy (with The Black Keys)
31 LEEDS – 02 Academy (with The Black Keys)

November
02 LONDON – Brixton 02 Academy (with The Black Keys)
04 NOTTINGHAM – Rock City (with The Black Keys)
06 LIVERPOOL – 02 Academy (with The Black Keys)
07 BOURNEMOUTH – 02 Academy (with The Black Keys)

Our Broken Garden have returned with their second album. Called Golden Sea, it’ll be released via Bella Union on 18th October.

You can hear the track ‘Garden Grow’ over on their Sound Cloud page here.

Expect more info and tour dates sooooon…

For fans that are already growing impatient for a follow-up to Grizzly Bear’s much lauded (and TLOBF’s best record of 2009) Veckatimest, this new collection from Department Of Eagles (Daniel Rossen’s first band), Archive 2003-2006, will surely tide fans over for the time being, while also giving them insight into Rossen’s evolving songwriting process that has gracefully colored Grizzly Bear’s output since Yellow House. While never approaching the finely tuned orchestral flourishes of Grizzly Bear, the songs (or skeletal sketches of songs) represented on this retrospective reveals the early experimentation and beauty found within the music that Rossen and his NYU roommate Fred Nicolaus originally intended to be the follow-up to their 2003 debut record, The Cold Nose. They eventually scrapped these sessions, and started working on the songs that what would eventually become the stunning In Ear Park. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of gloriously sublime moments to be found on Archive, as Rossen’s intricate harmonies are present throughout, as well as the instantly recognizable buoyant melodies and delicate guitar work that propel these diaphanous numbers and would ultimately shape the music that Rossen and Nicolaus would make in the future.

The album begins with ‘Practice Room Sketch 1′, the first of 5 fragmentary pieces that appear on this collection, which Rossen and Nicolaus recorded in NYU’s rehearsal rooms. All the ‘Practice Room’ pieces are short, incomplete numbers that show potential for growth, but alas are forever stuck in the developmental phase. As such, they end up forming dreamy segues into the more polished tracks on Archive more than anything else, except for ‘Practice Room Sketch 2′, which finds Rossen repeating the desperate entreaty “When is it going to get easier?” over minimal guitars and jagged percussion. It’s a poignant moment both on the album and in their career, for little did the duo know at the time that it was going to get easier soon enough, with the subsequent positive response to In Ear Park and Rossen’s eventual ascension into the indie-rock stratosphere a mere few years away.

The more accomplished, fully-realized songs found on Archive clearly hold the most appeal, with echoes of the musical elements that make the future recordings by these two so engaging and memorable. ‘Deadly Disclosure’ has a haunting, elegiac tone to it reminiscent of the spare acoustic numbers found on Yellow House, and ‘While We’re Young’ could easily be heard as direct precursor to ‘Teenagers,’ as well as the hypnotic vocal harmonies that have been so prevalent in Grizzly Bear’s recent output. ‘Grand Army Plaza’ and ‘Brightest Minds’ also echo Grizzly Bear’s tendency to gradually build on a persistent tempo, as the song swells and grows moodier and more affecting. These songs are really quite good in their own right, and make you wonder why Rossen and Nicolaus discarded them. But the last two “complete” songs on Archive, ‘Flip’ and ‘Golden Apple,’ are plodding numbers that clearly lack a spark, and it becomes a bit more obvious as to why they abandoned them in favor of starting over.

None of these songs are outright stunners, but they’re compelling simply because of the glimpse they provide into the primitive songwriting methods of two musicians who were both on the cusp of breaking through to prominence. There are familiar snippets layered within these songs that the pair would eventually expand upon and develop on their more successful material, and these skeletal pieces are fine examples of what can happen when artists have the opportunity to spend more time evolving their ideas. But the talent, inventiveness, and musical dexterity are all present on these songs, and even though there was no way for these musicians to know it, within a few short years everyone in the music cognoscenti would know Rossen and Nicolaus’ names. So much so, that these songs they once discarded in favor of starting over would be clamored for by fans that can’t get seem to get enough of their work.

Discovering that uber-special record label Bella Union are curating a stage at the bloated spectacle that is Hard Rock Calling – a two day festival primarily sponsored by the burger joint of the same name – is akin to finding a lost Klimt buried away between the frozen pizzas in ASDA.

Okay, maybe I’m being a bit harsh – there is some credit to a line up that includes Elvis Costello, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder (shame about the rest of the main stage line up. One word: Jamiroquoi). Nevertheless, it’s a testament to both the prestige that Bella Union have attained as well as the initiative and intelligence of the festival organisers.

The challenge presented is an interesting one: can such a relatively left-field line up of bands draw the audience away from what is primarily a very commercial and mainly MOR-focused event?

Saturday kicks off with Camden quintet My Sad Captains showcasing their strong but stable brand of Brit-Americana and Bella Union’s own Lone Wolf pushing their ambitious melancholic sound. Ostensibly a vehicle for frontman and chief songwriter Paul Marshall, Lone Wolf’s introspective songs really do benefit from a full band unit and provide the first highlight of the day.

Labelmates Mountain Man follow, bravely challenging the noise from the main stage crowd to some success. Although it’s difficult to focus on the beauty of their harmonies they still sound incredible, if a touch compromised by the setting.

The Morning Benders

I’ve reviewed Summer Camp before for this website and today is the first time I’ve seen them since then. The good news is they’re shaping up magnificently, with Elizabeth Sankey coming across every inch an indie-popstar in the making – she’s incredibly confident and charmingly playful with both the crowd and co-Camper Jeremy Warmsley. Best of all, their current body of work to date sounds warm, elegant and tight – an exciting taste of what their debut album is bound to deliver, leaving smiles on everyone’s faces.

As the sun begins to set, it’s almost time for Stevie Wonder’s headlining slot on the main stage and Zun Zun Egui – potentially the most challenging of Saturday’s line up – end up capitalising on the mildly-inebriated early-evening crowd. There’s much for them to dance to the Bristolians’ crazy yelping take on Beefheart-meets-Nusrat.

Onto Sunday and I’m wondering how The Morning Benders will compete with the England-Germany game, showing a couple of hundred metres across the park. Elvis Costello faces a similar challenge nearby too. There are enough of us, however, who don’t give enough of a shit about the football to show these Californian sons a decent welcome. While closer ‘Excuses’ is their trump card – a sweeping anthem for the summer – it sadly serves to emphasise the weaknesses elsewhere in their set, which doesn’t hit the same standards.

John Grant

Pearly Gate Music up the game with a glorious bastardised take on Dylan’s ‘Maggie’s Farm’ with singer Zac Tillman (brother of J.) writhing near-epiletic as he wrings every frustration out of the lyric. There’s a proficient but low-key set from Here We Go Magic to follow but the afternoon’s biggest treat is John Grant.

Playing much of debut record Queen of Denmark, Grant’s acerbicity and pathos, dispelled into lines like “Jesus he hates faggots, son”, “I regret the day your lovely carcass caught my eye” and “I casually mentioned that I pissed in your coffee” is received warmly by an audience who largely appear not to know a thing about Grant. A honeyed capabilty to his vocal draws many to his set but it’s the strength of his songwriting and performance that keeps them there. Ending his set with ‘JC hates Faggots’ and ‘Queen of Denmark’, there’s a palpable sense that many watching have just found their new favourite singer.

It’s left to Beach House to close procedings on the bandstage and fluff up the crowd for Paul McCartney’s headline set nearby. They tear through an efficient set that takes in much of the excellent Teen Dream and sees a glut of swoon boys and girls swaying to Victoria Legrand’s captivating vocal.

Beach House

Our 100th SOTD has arrived, and what better way to celebrate than a choice, fresh cut from Abe Vigoda?

However, those expecting more of the post-punk meatiness of their previous efforts might be in for a shock as ‘Throwing Shade’ has taken their previous copybook and, basically, torn it up. There’s beats. There’s synths. There’s fewer guitars. Honestly, when I first played this I wonder if I’d clicked on the right track. This is basically a twisted pop anthem, perfect for the elongated summer we’re all hoping has just arrived.

Once you’ve got past the pulsing beat that kick starts ‘Throwing Shade’, it’s then taken over by a jangling guitar riff and deep, drowning vocals that brings to mind those 80′s heavyweights Depeche Mode. But this is far too joyful to be stuck in their dark closet of fear, this is a song that’s constantly fighting to get out of the confines of its three-minutes.

Whatever the new album Crush sounds like, I’m now looking forward to it even more. Even if they can’t carry on with this party-atmosphere it doesn’t matter. With ‘Throwing Shade’ they’ve basically created one of the anthems for the summer.

Abe Vigoda: ‘Throwing Shade’

The appeal of London’s Union Chapel as a live music venue is in its simplicity as much as its grandeur. It’s hard not to appreciate the cavernous ceilings and air of reverence in the main hall, but essentially, when an audience is sat facing the small stage, nestled into the rows of seats, the experience becomes a fairly uncomplicated example of what is beautiful about a good live performance. You can forget about dancers and strobe lights, in this environment, only one thing takes center stage – the sound. Despite the impressiveness of the room there are no frills, in the best possible way.

A similar thing could be said of Bella Union records. A label with a reputation for quality, an incredibly strong discography and an authenticity that many a major label would love to buy; their success simply comes from an ethic of artistic freedom and nurturing over exploitation and is measured in the beautiful records they help to produce.

A luxurious line-up, then, of four Bella Union acts: Alessi’s Ark, Lone Wolf, Mountain Man and John Grant, sharing a stage at Union Chapel for an evening, is quite a proposition. One that TLOBF would’ve found it monumentally hard to pass-up if we’d wanted to, which we emphatically did not, especially since we were given a chance to interview each of the frankly brilliant acts performing on the night.

Alessi’s Ark

Hi Alessi, I really like the Sole Proprietor EP you put out on Bella Union.
Thank you!

I’m looking forward to the album, what’s happening there?
Well, I am in the middle of recording, I did some recording in Wales just before I went to do a tour in April and then I did a bit more last week in Brighton with the Willkommen Collective, Sons of Noel and Adrian, they’re people that I got to tour with and just got to know from playing places and being on the same bills and they’ve become friends of mine, they’re really comfortable to play with and easy to be around. So I did some recording with them and yeah, just working on it. I guess the Autumn is when I want it to be finished, but I feel like maybe it will be finished before then…

Going well?
Yeah it’s been fun! The loose plan would be to put it out in January, we’ve got a bit of time, but I thought that it’d be better just between shows and things just to be doing stuff… so I’m busying myself with that!

How have things changed since Notes From a Treehouse? Are things a bit different now?
Well I think it’s only healthy, traveling on – but I don’t think the music is going to be anything too dissimilar from what I’ve done. The common thread is that I’m singing!

No rapping?
No, I haven’t started rapping yet! Nothing too groovy! Yeah I feel like it’s a continuation of the last record, but the environment is different, for Sole Proprietor, which is the only thing I’ve put out since that -besides a split EP I had with thunderpower that was done at a friends house- I mean, the first three songs were recorded ‘as live’, so apart from a few songs on Notes From The Treehouse because there were quite intricate arrangements and things, the nature of the recordings were such that you couldn’t really do that many things ‘live’ and so it was quite fun to record some of these songs almost like a show, you know? And then the fourth track on that EP was made to sound like how it sounds when I play with the Willkommen and it’s fun because there are cornets and bits and bobs, things that I hadn’t really entertained before. But now, stick cornet on anything, anything can have a bit of cornet on it, hahaha! Yeah, it’s been fun – there’s a bit of harp on there and there was harp on the album so there are instruments that are re-occurring but um… I don’t know where the music is going, but it’s fun!

It’s going there by itself and you’re just following it, right?
Yeah yeah! I feel like it’s leading me… on…! Hahaha!

Opening the night to a still-growing crowd, Alessi cuts an unassuming figure standing alone on the Union Chapel stage. Her disarming, informal greetings flutter by and she begins to play. Some artists can peel their material back to the bare bones while losing none of the essential spirit, Alessi is one such artist. The sound of a beautiful voice working through a collection of sweet songs is a simple but powerful pleasure, one amplified by the dimensions of Union Chapel and the effortlessly likable character that threads through this performance.

Alessi’s Ark: ‘Shovelling’

Lone Wolf

Hey Paul, so you now have a name that isn’t… your name… so how did that come about?
Well, it came about from me realizing that I have a really shit name.

Heheheh. Right.
And also, I got sort of sick of being pigeon-holed as a singer-songwriter. And many would say “well you were a singer-songwriter” or “you are a singer-songwriter” but there’s a problem and a weird little stigma that comes with that sometimes.

Absolutely.
And you know… how many records probably drop on radio DJ’s desks every day – “John Smith”  “Michael So-And-So” …

Johnny McPowerballad…
Yeah, you know and the thing was… Vultures was very much about ‘Paul Marshal’, the songs on that record were brought in from all kinds of different timeframes and stuff, it wasn’t meant to be an album originally, it was kind of a compilation of my work as it were. And then when it came to recording this record, I always wanted to just push things a little further and it came to making the demos and I just wanted to shake off that initial sort of immediate singer-songwriter label because I wanted people to sort of give this a chance, like maybe from the point of view of thinking that it’s a full band at first – I don’t know, I think I wanted to create a little bit of an illusion I suppose.

I don’t think you’d be alone in that, I mean it happens all the time, doesn’t it? People instinctively approach something with more of an open mind at the moment for some reason if it’s given a name that appeals – I mean Beirut, St Vincent… the list goes on.
Precisely. And it’s not because I think I’m worth any more than anyone else or anything stupid like that. I guess that after I signed to Bella Union I just felt that I wanted a fairer crack of the whip, really, rather than just have people make that assumption that I’m this singer-songwriter, which is why in a way I was happy we put ’Keep Your Eyes On The Road’ out as the first single because I wanted people to hear that, and then have responses coming back like “Who are they?” and “Where are they from?” and it’s – Aha! it’s not actually a “they” it’s a “he”, you know?

So now that you have the new name and it’s sort of a fresh project in that sense, how do you feel things are moving on?
It’s certainly moving on in the sense that I’m getting a lot more opportunities than I ever got as Paul Marshall and it’s weird actually because we’re in the location that I think a year and three days ago that Paul Marshall metaphorically died! It was the last gig in here. But yeah I mean at the end of the day it… it’s only a name.

Have you been doing a lot of live stuff for the new album?
Yeah, quite a bit, I went on tour with Wild Beasts which was great, did that solo. Then there’s Blue Roses (Laura Groves), she comes out with me and we do it as a two piece, then we do it as a five piece like tonight. But we’re doing bits and pieces, we were in the Royal Festival Hall on Monday, supported Broken Bells, which was pretty…

That sounds amazing.
Yeah it was pretty much one of the best nights of my life, got to play the Steinway hidden, you know in the Royal Festival Hall. Well, you only have to imagine it really, it was pretty spectacular.

Yeah, I am imagining it, right now…. Any other highlights to look forward to?
Green man. Oh and I don’t know how 100% confirmed this is, but I think I’m going to be touring America with Wild Beasts, only for like four or five dates or something but that’ll be fun.

So what with changing the dynamic so often, five pieces, two pieces – how does the music translate? Do you have a favorite way to play the stuff?
Favourite way is always full band, always, because that’s the closest to how it sounds on the record. But the one advantage I have, whereas some bands might have an ‘acoustic set’ where they strip the songs down, for me that’s where the songs started, so when I do it on my own or as a two piece the songs are just going down to were they started from, the core of the song is still there. But yeah I prefer it when I have James smacking the crap out of the drums and the synths going. Also, it’s nice to hang out with my friends, you know it’s nice to not have to be on the stage by myself all of the time you know?

While it could be argued that the sound of some of the other acts tonight might take to the cavernous echo chamber of Union Chapel like the proverbial duck to water, Lone Wolf’s set up might find the acoustics from the stage a slightly less comfortable variation in environment. Adaptability, however, is the key to success, and with the thrumming alternative rock teased out with a measure of restraint, fighting to get away and thunder around the room, gaining richness and drama without losing too much in the way of clarity.

Lone Wolf: ’15 Letters’

Mountain Man

Hello! How long has Mountain Man been a band for?
Molly: Just over a year, like a year and three months…

And you came together and started writing songs?
Amelia: We already had a lot of the songs that we sing. Alex wrote Animal Tracks and we learned it and I wrote Honey Bee and so… it was.. an amazing event.

So you turn up to indie clubs or maybe these black boxes where a lot bands show up with drums and guitars and pianos and everything – and for most of the set is just you guys singing. A lot people probably don’t expect that.
Molly: No and they especially don’t expect to see three women appearing under the name Mountain Man!

Amelia: Usually it’s the initial shock that gets people in. And that’s nice, but usually we can’t string them along further based on the fact that our songs are authentic and interesting. Sometimes it’s really hard.

Alex: I mean bars are definitely not the best venue for us to be performing in.

Molly: But sometimes they’re great!

Alex: Yeah sometimes it feels good to fight for it.

Amelia: …and it feels deserved and earned when you have to really work to get the audience to be there. And once they’re there, they’re there.

Molly: I think it’s really refreshing sometimes for people to hear just three voices without drums and guitars and everything else on top of it!

Amelia: I think those things are wonderful, but it’s refreshing to be without them sometimes. Especially in the land of reverb that we currently live in.

So do you guys just hang out a lot together, singing all of the time? Is that how you practice?
Molly: Actually we don’t really practice, we just hang out.

Alex: I live in Virginia, which is a nine hour drive from Vermont. So we don’t practice unless we’re together.

Amelia: But we can learn to play it right in like fifteen minutes? We’ve got it down within an hour. We have good communication.

So what inspires you to make songs? What do you think about when you’re singing in harmony?
Molly: I think about going inside people’s chests with my voice.

Huh. That’s interesting.
Molly: Yeah because everything else is already there and what we have is already there, I don’t have to think about it.

Amelia: By now it’s just muscle reflex, like our bodies know how to sing and so we don’t really have to think so much about the song, just about the emotion.

Alex: Yeah it’s more that we just have to tap into that emotion when we’re singing… I think about family … and being a woman and being a human that conducts sound, particularly in this hall, it felt really, really amazing to feel that “okay I am going to open my mouth and my voice is going to be like synthesized with these other two voices”.

Molly: Sometimes I think about people I really love and care about and try to share that.

Union Chapel seems almost purpose built for what Mountain Man do here tonight. Having seen the room and decided to perform with no amplification at all, the three ladies stand hand in hand on the stage and wind together layers of vocal harmonies with incredible skill, accompanied only occasionally by a solitary acoustic guitar. Their voices reverberate around the lofty ceilings, the intelligence and playfulness of the vocal-only compositions could never fail to raise a smile. It wouldn’t be an overstatement to describe a performance like this as unmissable, the audience are hearing the layers of a contemporary folk band peeled all the way back to the core, and it’s fascinating how luxurious and expansive it can sound with the right amount of skill. If one were to risk spinning a cliché, a Mountain Man show such as this one is a truly organic live music experience.

Mountain Man: ‘Soft Skin’

John Grant

Hi, John. So let’s start by talking about the new album. Are these songs that you have collected over the years, or songs that you wrote specifically for the album?
Three of them are ideas that I had before, but the other nine all came about during the course of recording. So it’s all pretty fresh.

And you worked with Midlake on the album, how did that come about?
Well we’d both been on Bella Union for a long time and we met at SXSW down in Austin whilst having breakfast one morning with Simon and everyone. We just hit it off right away, kept in touch a little bit. Then Eric Pulido asked me to come down and sing at his wedding and that sort of cemented out friendship, I got to know them all a little bit better. They knew that I was struggling with the music… that I was sort of giving up on music because I had such a nightmare experience with The Czars and that the music business in general is just really disheartening and they started asking me to come and do my first solo album with them. And the Czars basically had very little success, we were together for over ten years and so I was really just unsure, I was living in New York when the time came to go and record the new record and I was doing well, I was doing Russian medical interpreting which is another big passion of mine, languages. So I was working at a really high-end restaurant and I had insurance and I had started to put down roots in that city, which is a hard thing to do, I would imagine it’s the same way here in London, it takes a long time to get to know this place? Like years?

Yeah, absolutely.
And so I was thinking “Well you’re forty one years old, are you really going to go and try again, aren’t you just fooling yourself? Shouldn’t you just give up? The reason that you didn’t make it before is that you’re simply not good enough, so just quit.”

But I felt like it was an offer that I just couldn’t refuse, it was just too good. And I felt like deep down I still had something to give and that I should be doing it. And Midlake really encouraged me, they said to me “we feel that you are far from done, what you need to do is simply keep going..”

So it was more than simply guys that you started to hang out with and play music with they really were a huge source of support. Without those guys it might not have happened?
It’s hard to say, I think the music would’ve gotten to me eventually, it would have kept coming. But, I don’t know. I’ve been asked this question several times and I am still not sure, it is very special the way it happened and it could not have been this way if it hadn’t happened this way of course. I know that sounds obvious, but you know what I’m saying.

That balance you have in your life. Having that dream, that passion and wanting that to be your life and also needing to commit to having another life, sometimes we have to admit harsh things to ourselves about how realistic our dreams are. Sometimes we need to re-evaluate the role that something like music for example might end up playing in our lives…
Yeah.

But having someone to tip the scales for you in a certain direction…
They kept after me. They kept saying “Come on man, we’re here. Let’s do it. Let’s go. You can live here for free, you can use the studio for free and we will be your backing band for free.”

That’s amazing.
Yeah, it’s huge. And that was encouraging in itself, that people I respected that much had that much faith in me as a musician. That I was respected as a musician and an artist by these people that I respected myself. That was nice because I really felt down on myself. I really felt like a failure. So that really helped me out a lot.

Yeah, you said earlier that you would tell yourself “you’re just not good enough” and I think that’s a place that we can all go to very easily.
Well, I was there you know, I kept showing up, I kept doing it. But the thing is, it simply does nothing for the situation for you to call yourself a failure and that you’re not good enough.

What is the difference at the end of the day? What’s the difference between doing it and being terrible and doing it and being under appreciated? I mean, does it matter?
I see your point and I sort of agree, I think the thing is that there are so many variables involved that you can’t understand.

When people talk about The Czars being ‘cult’. What does it mean?
Nothing. Nothing. Because you’re thinking “well I can’t pay my fucking rent!” I don’t care if everyone thinks I’m great when I’m dead. I want to figure it out now. I’m not asking for much, I’m not going to have the world’s greatest architect to build me the house of my dreams on prime real estate in Beverly Hills and I’m going to own half the world and hang out with Mick Jagger, but I can probably have a life doing music.

And why shouldn’t you?
And why shouldn’t I?

John Grant: ‘Marz’

The sense of John Grant’s vulnerability has not faded, although at this stage it does seem to form major part of his charm, his appeal, the the feeling from sections of the audience as they applaud out each song is that they feel personally invested in John’s well-being, his journey. For his part, John seems well, while not completely devoid of tension, fairly happy and comfortable. He mentions, as he has before that London holds a certain significance for him and that he particularly wants to play well while he is here. For tonight at least, he doesn’t disappoint- he delivers his heart-bearing laments, all of the passion, occasional twists of humour and surges of emotion with a with a certain open intensity. The sense of catharsis runs through the performance, perhaps, some dare to hope another stop in his road to that final success, redemption and final validation that his fans might feel he has long deserved.

All photography by Paul Bridgwater

Bella Union’s genre busting Abe Vigoda have announced plans to release a new album this September.

It’ll be called Crush, will hit the shops on 20th September, and apparently see’s the band further increase their sonic pallet. Leader singer Vidal says as much: “My favourite kind of music is instantly nostalgic and emotionally confusing. And reverb has always been a big part of our sound. We were definitely inspired by cold wave and minimal wave stuff, as well as Arthur Russell.”

We wait to hear this with much anticipation…

The opening seven seconds of Made The Harbor feature a brief guitar chord and the clearing of a throat (twice) – suggesting “settle down: we have something to share”. ‘Buffalo’ grows out of a simple guitar line, with the trio of Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Amelia Randall Meath building the first of their signature 3-part harmonies, joining the lyric “follow, follow, follow the buffalo” one-by-one. It’s so easy to forget the source of folk and blues music amidst the rattles and demands of the 21^st Century existence, one of the numerous reasons why the simplicity of Mountain Man’s sound – three female voices, layered in a bluesy harmony, and an acoustic guitar – is so refreshing.

Made the Harbor is a tapestry of thirteen incredibly intimate songs, interweaving and concerning animals, nature, womanhood, and the turbulences of romance. The band’s creation occurred a small town in Vermont, when Amelia heard the sound of Molly playing ‘Dog Song’ in a shared house, demanding her to teach it to her. The version blessing this album is a quiet torrent of fear, love and anger (in that order) – worries of a lost dog and howling coyotes culminating in “hurry up baby / hurry up baby / or get out of my site”, taken from a whisper to a heart-torn declaration.

It’s a pursuit of joy that repeated surfaces through these songs – ‘Animal Tracks’ promises whispers in summer air, and seeking out “the bright baby eyes of a chickadee” in a harmony of delighted Americana. The divine vocal of ‘White Heron’, “draw me still”, halts the listener also; ‘Arabella’ is longing for strength in a desperate moment, dreaming for “lost mothers’ instruments”, trying to “keep your birthday and the car ride alive”; whilst “cool green Caroline” is observed delicately through the eyes of a lover on ‘Sewee Sewee’.

There are moments where folk is traded for something else, drawing differing moods into the record: the cover of The Mills Brothers’ 30s hit ‘How’m I Doin’’ is pure barbershop, ‘Babylon’ a melancholic psalm sung as a canon, retaining a baroque hint. The two changes of tone won’t necessarily win over the hearts of fans of quiet intimacies, but they don’t harm a record of this fine crafting, simplicity that rewards repeated listening – drawing one further and further in a hushed world of subtle tape hiss and away from digital age (or whatever it’s supposed to be). Mountain Man is a deservedly welcome addition to already-great Bella Union.

It was the mention of winning a Bella Union branded Tea Towel that hooked you in wasn’t it? Thought so.

As you may already know, our friends over at Bella Union are throwing a party on June 24 at London’s Union Chapel which will feature four of their newest artists – Alessi’s Ark, Mountain Man, Lone Wolf and John Grant - perform in one of London’s most glorious and iconic venues. Tickets for “A Summer Evening With Bella Union” are on sale now priced at a meagre £12.50.

To celebrate this most classy of events, we’ve come up with a classy competition to match (this is where the tea towels come in).

YOU. CAN. WIN…..

1 x Pair of tickets for “A Summer Evening With Bella Union”
1 x Lone Wolf 7″
1 x Alessi’s Ark Sole Proprietor EP
1 x Bella Union Fanzine… with contributions from all Bella Union peeps
1 x Bella Union Tea Towel (!!!!!!)
1 x Bella Union ‘Beneath The Surface’ Compilation

…..and that’s not all. The icing on the cake is in the form of a very special cassette featuring all of your favourite Bella Union bands covering their own songs. Yes, a selection of Bella’s finest were asked to record an instrumental of one of their all time classic hits using only MIDI. The recordings were collected and added to cassette tape (naturally). The cassette also comes with a Karaoke Lyric Sheet so you can sing along to your favourite Bella Union jams…

The cassette track-listing is as follows:

Side One
1. Vetiver – Everyday
2. Sleeping States – Rivers
3. Stephanie Dosen – Only Getting Better
4. Abe Vigoda – Bear Face
5. Ohbijou – Black Ice
6. Fleet Foxes – Mykonos

Side Two
1. Beach House – Master of None
2. J. Tillman – James Blues
3. The Acorn – Flood Pt. 1
4. My Latest Novel – Reputation of Ross Francis
5. Peter Broderick – Below It
6. Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal

Amazing, huh?

To grab this insane amount of booty, you don’t actually have to answer a question. All you need do is email ret@thelineofbestfit.com with an explanation on why YOU should win the prize. In a nut shell – what does Bella Union mean to you? The best answer wins the lot. Please make sure you mark the email with the subject line Bella Union Booty and include your name and a contact telephone number. Closing date is this Monday 21 June. The winner will be notified via email.

Falling in love with a record happens but once or twice a year, sometimes even less often. There are those albums you really like – the ones that make your blood pump faster or wake you up in the morning when there’s sleep in your eyes or a sigh in your heart. And then there are those truly special records that soundtrack an entire summer or get you through moments of life-threatening anxiety and terror, music that somehow becomes a part of your life, grafted onto your consciousness and memory like some weird extra limb.

I fell in love so quickly with John Grant’s Queen of Denmark that I thought it might be some cruel trick of audio magic. Just a single play and it felt like a missing tectonic plate on my musical earth had suddenly drifted into view, a lost continent filled with mystery, substance and instant reward.

The first heady week of this relationship saw me totter into my day job day after day with a loved-up grin on my face, sighing to lyrics like “I wanted to change the world/But I couldn’t even change my underwear” and “I casually mentioned that I pissed in your coffee”. Such is life.

To preface this review with such hyperbole and plaudits will give an idea of my state of mind and expectation prior to John Grant’s first headlining show in the capital. Under most circumstances, fulfilling expectations like this would be a herculean task but somehow John Grant pulls it off, giving me one of the best live music experiences I’ve had this century.

Grant is that rare thing – as excellent a songwriter as he is a performer. Taking to the stage with a four piece band, he runs through a trim set that succeeds in blowing the collective minds of the audience. Indeed, at one point I glance around to see grown men blink tears away. It’s that powerful.

Grant’s talent is to take the traditions and constructions of popular song writing and meld them to his own experiences which are by turns filled with bitterness, regret, joy and glory. The effect is an authentic progression on the American songbook. More than once tonight he alludes to the optimism present in all of his songs – which on the surface are angry tales of a harsh upbringing and numerous bad relationships. Among such an acquiescent audience, Grant appears entirely comfortable embracing the confessional aspects of both his songs and personality.

He has admitted that the ability to express himself honestly wasn’t something he felt comfortable about during his decade with The Czars. A couple of Czars numbers are rolled out tonight, including the stunning ‘Drug’ from the 2001 record The Ugly People Vs. the Beautiful People. On songs like this his vocal is an effortless weapon – it hits the rises and falls with grace, ease and sustained power.

‘Silver Platter Club’ and ‘Chicken Bones’ see Grant channel Randy Newman while his piano work recalls the more appealing areas of Elton John’s early seventies output – I’m thinking mainly of ‘Honky Chateau’ and ‘Madman Across the Water’.

The two touchstones of tonight’s set are arguably the most personal songs of the night, ‘Queen of Denmark’ and ‘JC Hates Faggots’, both of which are prefaced with some biography, giving colour to the themes and lyrics of Grant’s music. Talking before ‘Queen of Denmark’, he recalls a trip to see his mother in hospital following a hysterectomy and his father noting that a particularly ugly cactus in the waiting room looks like ‘what they just took out of your mother’.

A truly deserved  call for an encore follows his exit, with Grant visably disarmed and overwhelmed by this turn of events. He returns to stage and somehow ambles through through the undulating ballad ‘Caramel’. “My love is the rarest jewel/and he crowns me with his love”, he sings, almost forgetting the words but buoyed along by encouragement from the crowd.

We are behind him all the way, touched at witnessing a performance laced with talent and humility.

Our buds over at Bella Union have just announced their annual stage at Hyde Park’s “Hard Rock Calling” festival. Following on from two successful years at the O2 Wireless Festival (same venue, different branding), they’ve really stepped up their game this year with their best line-up to date.

Over the two days the stage will play host to a number of Bella Union’s rising stars including John Grant, Beach House, Pearly Gate Music, Mountain Man and Lone Wolf as well as a few hand-picked favourites including current TLOBF obsessions The Morning Benders and Summer Camp.

The stage will run from 3 – 8pm each day with the acts appearing in the order below…

Saturday 26th June
My Sad Captains
Lone Wolf
Mountain Man
Summer Camp
Zun Zun Egui

Saturday 27th June
The Morning Benders
Pearly Gate Music
Here We Go Magic
John Grant
Beach House

Tickets available via Eventim.

Radiohead’s Philip Selway has announced plans to release his debut solo album on Bella Union records. To be called Familial, it’ll be released on 30th August and see’s Selway craft a singer-songwriter album rather than just a “drummer” side-project.

The idea of a solo album was apparently seeded when Selway played on Neil Finn’s solo project 7 Worlds Collide back in 2001. During the sessions for Familial, Selway invited Germano, Steinberg, Wilco drummer Glenn Kotche and multi-instrumentalist Patrick Sansone to come and make the record with him. All who were also involved in 7 Worlds.

Anyway… actually looking forward to this one muchly…

Being one of much-loved Bella Union’s latest cohorts comes with a certain degree of expectation. Lone Wolf (formally Paul Marshall) releases his second album The Devil And I into a cannon of existing material where it will find itself more than one bedfellow from the label’s current roster of Stephanie Dosen, Midlake, John Grant et al.

From the opening bars of ‘This is War’ the malevolent darkness which permeates Marshall’s sophomore stakes its claim: “I slaughtered her a cow and I’m a vegetarian / It’s not man enough for her / Not bloody enough.” Marshall’s almost theatrical vocal is delivered, like a man pleading for his life, over simple electric piano before brass blasts from the parapet and marching drums lift the track into a rousing finale.

There’s a quality to The Devil And I which is distinctly English, and it’s not just Marshall’s unaffected vocal delivery.  His virtuoso finger picking style coupled with the arrangements of strings and brass bring to mind the collaboration of Nick Drake and his production / arrangement team of Joe Boyd and Paul Kirby. With this in mind it’s no wonder that comparisons to purveyors of ‘proper folk’ such as Fairport Convention’ ring true. The Side B opening pairing of ‘The Devil and I (Part 1)’ into ‘Russian Winter’ demonstrates this perfectly; the former a sinister piano line, pulled straight from the perpetually pirouetting ballerina in a music box, joined by maudlin strings and funeral march drums; the latter a deftly finger picked affair accompanied by shivering strings and sparse piano.

That said, there is perhaps a little more polish on the production than is perhaps needed; vocals are often double-tracked, drums are slick to the point of sounding programmed. For a record so steeped in the influence of traditional folk it would have been nice for things to have been a little frayed at the edges. I imagine that when performed live this album is nothing but arresting, a quality which is perhaps lost here through not knowing when to put the production brush down. It’s often the case that the most affecting tracks are those which have been kept simple (‘We Could Use Your Blood’, ’15 Letters’, ‘Dead River’).

On his second album – or Lone Wolf’s first – Marshall has created work which is bold, assured and focused. It’s dark, foreboding and centred around a theme from which it does not let up. There’s a great deal to be digested, and not just musically; I’ve avoided the temptation of  saturating this review in the record’s endlessly quotable lyrics, as choosing a small handful would be unfair to those left unmentioned. It looks like that in Lone Wolf it looks like Bella Union have yet another string to add to their bow.

Lone Wolf: ’15 Letters’

Wavves returns with a new album this Summer. Appropriately titled King of the Beach, it will be released on 2nd August via Bella Union. That’s the lovely cover art above.

After the weird and wonderful last couple of year’s Nathan Williams (aka Wavves) has had, it’s good to know he’s been back recording music.

“There was a conscious effort going into this that I didn’t want to make the same record again. I already made the same record twice, with the same f*cking cover art,” says Williams. “It wasn’t overbearing, but I didn’t want to recreate something I’d done. I wanted to make something bigger, something stronger.”

More information when we get it!

Former Czar John Grant premiers the video for ‘I Wanna Go To Marz’ here at The Line Of Best Fit; an amazing tale of life after death, ghost parties, liquorice babies and a descent into madness – directed by Casey Raymond and Ewan Jones Morris.

John’s almost absurd snippets of life are glued together into a poem of longing tempered with darkness.  Having Midlake as his band only further adds to the emotional connection; as it is their heart that pumps life into this vessel.  Taken from the astonishing and TLOBF recommended album Queen Of Denmark, it resonates with the elation from their inspired pairing.  The images play alongside the music with themes of despair and loss juxtaposed with reunion and joy. This magical combination of sound and vision is something you won’t want to miss.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We featured the Vermont based all-girl folk crooners a few weeks ago on Song Of The Day with the gorgeous ‘Animal Tracks’. Not resting on their laurels, Mountain Man are now offering out the sublime ‘Soft Skin’ from their forthcoming album Made The Harbor (out June 14 via Bella Union).

Reports from SXSW would suggest these girls are astonishing live, well us lucky Brits can see for ourselves when they fly over for a mini tour in June which includes an appearance at Glastonbury. Dates are:

June
22 Deaf Institute, Manchester
24 Union Chapel, London (Bella Union Night)
27 Glastonbury Festival (Queen’s Head Stage)
28 Nation Of Shopkeepers, Leeds

July
1 St Augustine’s Tower, London

Mountain Man: ‘Soft Skin’

Pearly Gate Music’s debut is a beautiful blend of fuzzy lo-fi indie and as you would expect from Zach Tillman, (and yes, in case you didn’t know by the now he is the brother of Fleet Foxes drummer and accomplished solo artist Joshua Tillman), holds a maturity beyond its years.

From it’s gently hissing white noise to its quivering instrumentals ‘Golden Funeral’ is a beautiful introduction to this debut album, as Zach’s softly spoken words glide over the trickling rain drops and crackling chords. The infectious guitar strums and pounding drums of album highlight ‘Big Escape’ provide an uplifting anthem that inspires dreams of summer adventures, and as the electric guitar kicks in towards the end, this song along with the stunning emotional instability of ‘Gossamer Hair’, really does set Pearly Gate Music apart from many of their contemporaries.

The production on this album has done all it can to capture the live, raw instrumentals and the aching emotions in Tillman’s voice, and even though it falls just short on songs such as ‘I Woke Up’ and ‘I Was A River’, they are still undeniably breath taking. The intermittent shudders from the snare and tambourine in ‘I Was A River’ accompany a heart felt story that initially seems full of loving promise but, as Tillman reveals that he would only do these things “If I still loved you” , the soaring melody comes to a jarring halt to be replaced by a overwhelming sense of melancholy.

Pearly Gate Music’s self-titled release is a charming collection of folk songs that sees young Zach Tillman dip his toes into the more traditional folk of his brother’s material, but ultimately proves he his more than ready to step out on his own.

Another fine addition to the ever growing Bella Union canon of Americana artists – Pearly Gate Music (aka Zach Tillman) offered up his self-titled debut album to stream in full today. It’s safe to say that Tillman, brother of Fleet Foxes drummer Josh Tillman, is certainly not riding on the coat-tails of his big brothers band, or indeed solo career. Although Pearly Gate Music dabbles its feet in the traditional mountain folk of Fleet Foxes / J. Tillman material, it’s an altogether more lo-fi affair. Recorded at home, or on “Deadbeat Street” as Tillman likes to put it, the album is a snap shot of Tillman’s experimentation as a songwriter. From the tender, scratchy balladry of album opener “Golden Funeral” to the powerful, barn storming “Gossamer Hair” and everything in-between; Pearly Gate Music will sound familiar and new all at the same time… Well worth investigating. Listen in full below.

To celebrate the release of their debut album Made The Harbor, their first trip over to Europe and in general being wonderful Bella Union are hosting a show for Mountain Man in the lovely surroundings of St. Augustine’s Tower (East London) on Thursday 1st July. It’s a pretty small and intimate place and in turn only 35 tickets for this show are available… They are going super fast, act quick and grab one here.

Still not had the pleasure of hearing Mountain Man? We posted up a brand new track in our Song Of The Day column a couple of weeks ago. Seek it out here.