You can often form an opinion on a new album from the first twenty seconds of the opening track. This important measure of time will allow you to get a slight feel of the music, and provide you with material to praise, or material to slate in your head. Regardless of whether you’re a ‘three listens at least’ person or not, people by nature are quick to judge, it happens to everyone. Take Old Theatrics by The Minor White for example. The first track ‘Old Fashioned Drinker (In A River Of Glue)’ throws out an intro worthy of a Cursive album, all dark strings muttering and a vintage piano rising up to a crescendo. After this, we’re soothed by a relaxed vocal melody, which takes us by the hand and gently walks us through the rest of the song. But it’s the first 30 seconds that really stuck, a strong start which impressed and promised great, progressive things. So I wandered through the first listen of Old Theatrics still under the impression that this was an amazing album. And now I’m at the end of a few more run-throughs, I can’t help but get the impression that i may have been deceived slightly. This is still a great album, but it’s sadly sometimes hamstrung by it’s own desires to have a strong pop element. Continue Reading

Micah Blue Smaldone is a former punk scenester from New England who has moved on to sparse, rootsy folk. The Red River, his fourth solo record, is dominated by meditative, neo-traditional acoustica with an eye for theatre. While intimate in scale it much less personal than, say, Bon Iver, but more focused on the kind of dust-choked cinematics of recent albums by the similarly named Micah P Hinson or Isobel Campbell and Mark Lanegan, albeit with a less bawdy vocal style. Fans of Will Oldham and Iron & Wine’s sparser material may find much to enjoy in the rusted, bleak atmospherics here. The Thrill Jockey press release tells me Smaldone sounds ‘like a dead man’, which may seem like hyperbole but there is something spectral about the old-time quality of the music. Like a less wildly impressionistic Grizzly Bear, there is a deliberately spooked mood to The Red River - the sense that Smaldone is trying to conjure the ghosts of a past, not just resurrect the music itself. The production quality is as if it was processed through an analogue radio: the skeletal picked guitar, vagabond banjo and viola all sound somehow starched. Continue Reading

James Yuill hails from London and blends folk, electronica and pop into a rather beautiful landscape of sound. There’s plenty of artists currently ploughing this furrow, but Yuill makes it seem a more joyful world to live in. Apart from an identity crisis, he tells us a bit about how it all started…

For people out there that have never heard of you. Give us three reasons why they should…
Because I’ve had four number ones, my 1986 album ‘Slippery When Wet’ sold in excess of 26 million copies and it set the record for the most weeks for a hard rock album at #1 on the Billboard 200… oh no… wait that’s Bon Jovi… there’s no reason why people should have heard of me.

Can you recall the moment when you first decided you wanted to become a musician?
I think it was when I heard Nirvana’s ‘Nevermind’ for the first time… I knew I wanted to play rock guitar! My aspirations have changed slightly as I’ve grown up.

Where do your songs come from? What’s your inspiration?
I’m not really sure where they come from… my subconscious I guess. I just sit down and sing whatever comes into my head… the first verse done, I then try and work out what I’m on about then steer/force the rest along a similar path.

Name your Top 5 records.
Difficult, but it would have to be…
Nick Drake - Pink Moon
Radiohead - Hail to the Thief
4hero - Creating Patterns
Tasmin Archer - Great Expectations
Jackson and his Computer Band - Smash

What was the first gig you ever played and was it a success?
The first gig in public was at the tunbridge wells forum with my school band. it was a success…but success isn’t always easy on the ear, as we proved.

What one piece of criticism has stuck in your mind and was it justified?
That I have a weedy voice (courtesy of Time Out). I think it was justified.

What one thing has caused you to waste your free time in the past 6 months?
Waiting for MySpace to load/sort it’s problems out.

If you weren’t making music, what do you think you’d be doing?
Audio forensics… long story.

What’s the worst job you’ve ever had?
I once spent a night loading lorries at a factory in North West London. It was a long night shift and apart from an hour break in the middle there was no let up. The parcels would come down this conveyer belt directly into the back of the lorry and if you weren’t fast enough they would build up jam the main package artery. Eventually the break came, but the canteen wasn’t serving food, so all i could have was a Sprite and then back to work. It was also deafening so after one night I never went back. I didn’t even get paid for that night!

We’d like you to make us a mix-tape. Pick five tracks with a theme of your choice.
The theme is people who died too young:
Nick Drake - Time has Told me
Jim Morrison - People are Strange
Jimi Hendrix - Little Wings
Janis Joplin - Move Over
Jeff Buckley - Dream Brother

James Yuill on Myspace

To quote the man Matt Arbogast himself, “This fucker sounds just like Tom Waits, Do we need another Tom Waits?” Well, for much of the latest EP of the three bundled up for this ‘album’ release, it’s a rasping Tom Waits fronting the raggamuffin era Dexys Midnight Runners running through the more frantic songs from Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. In fact, in comparison, he’s close to making Tom Waits sound like the latest Pop Idol contender waiting for their balls to drop. At other times we have a croaking blue collar balladeer in the style of a folky Ghost Of Tom Joad Springsteen. This is an album from an artist that sounds ravaged - physically and emotionally, and to concentrate on it can leave you wilting and feeling the same. Continue Reading

When I say that Brendan Campbell is Scottish, there’s already a damn good reason for giving this album a listen, due to the fact that hearing the words ‘burgers’ and ‘murders’ said in a Scottish accent is pretty brilliant - it certainly explains why ITV keep making Taggart. Continue Reading

We at TLOBF have a lot to thank Fireworks Night for. Among their most recent achievements, their label Organ Grinder Records helped bring Left With Pictures to us and Firworks Night themselves played TLOBF’s Ill Fit club night just recently, which I understand was rather good. Their current offering though, is this new EP (or mini-album, if you like 28 minutes and six songs, it’s quite a beefy EP) A Mirror, A Ghost.

First up is “You, Holding.” One of the first things you notice is the curious, half-spoken vocal style which dominates the album. The song is a haunting affair, a slow descent into a yawning abyss, which gradually and patiently grows in intensity before everything is stripped away again - maybe we reached the bottom? Continue Reading

Victoria and Jacob played, as far as I’m aware, at TLOBF’s very first gig at the Portland Arms in Cambridge the other day. I wasn’t there, and listening to this EP, I wonder how they are as a live act - it’s an intriguing thought which I’m sure several TLOBF staffers could now enlighten me on.

V&J’s sound is a twinkling, light, but affecting one - “Clash” is slightly disappointing in a sense that it isn’t about a seminal punk outfit, but satisfies in every other respect. Victoria’s voice soars over a simplistic synthetic beat and a insistent drone, with glockenspiel, odd rattling sounds and acoustic guitar taking turns to add their own contributions. “It’s not about apologies”, we hear, “it’s about understanding.” It seems to be a song about inevitability and sealing yourself off from the world when things get tough, but what the hell do I know? At the end, there’s a sound which makes me think of the death throes of a toy robot, which is nice. Continue Reading

This album is a hard one to review. Oh yes. Not because it’s bad, its brilliant, and I’m so impressed by That’s The Spirit (Ottawan native Ben Wilson, with some help from a few good friends) that to put into words how much i like this album would take up 3 pages and probably only consist of the word ‘incredible’. And that wouldn’t make a good review. When I do try, whenever I get a good point in my head, I automatically forget it because im too lost in the music. This album feels like an album. It isn’t a collection of songs loosely bundled together. It’s a positive cloud of music, something almost tangible. When Staying Places is playing, an atmosphere is created that is ethereal, almost dream-like and at the same time, a focused concentration of well placed instruments and vocal lines. In fact, if I wasn’t woken up slightly by the vintage piano introduction of ‘It’s Curtains For You’ (a track that drifts across your mental horizon halfway through this release, and then leaves after less than two minutes), Staying Places would have me in a trance from start to finish. Continue Reading

Smile Down Upon Us is a collaboration between London based music makers Keiron Phelan and David Sheppard and Tokyo based vocalist MoomLooo. It was a collaboration born through the internet as Phelan Sheppard found Moomlooo through myspace and, after exchanging messages of mutual admiration, a collaboration was born. Continue Reading

Juana Molina is an former television actress from Argentina with an unlikely passion for making a kind of cut and paste folk-tinged electronica (look, I managed to do that without saying ‘folktronica’). Molina’s latest album for Domino comprises eight lengthy, carefully assembled pieces with a focus on layered grooves: tightly coiled constructions of looped acoustic guitar, vocal cooing and harmonies, chimes, drones and occasionally the kitchen sink. After the rollicking, revelrous opening title track, Un Dia is sometimes sunny, sometimes sultry and occasionally bleakly nocturnal. Molina’s lo-fi collages are not always immediately arresting, building and subsiding with an unhurried lightness of touch. The likes of ‘Quien? (Suite)’ wake up as gently as a spring morning, dreamy vocal splices interlocking and dovetailing over a persistent almost-house bassline. By contrast ‘Lo Dejamos’ and ‘Los Hongos De Marosa’ are oblique, all murmers and shadowy bass squelches. Continue Reading

Woodpigeon hail from Canada, a country which, it would seem to TLOBF, is not neccesarily punching above its weight musically but certainly punching hard. Specifically, Mark Hamilton’s band are from Calgary - also the origin of The Dudes, whose album Brain, Heart, Guitar I reviewed quite favourably not long ago.

Woodpigeon are also in the process of touring at the moment, and also promoting “album 1.5″, the “tour album” Treasure Library Canada. With that in mind, it might seem strange that we’re only just reviewing their debut album Songbook - the reason for that is that this album was released in Canada way back in 2006, but is only just getting a belated UK release. If you caught this month’s TLOBF Monthly Mixtape -“September, And The Tragic End of Summer Like So Much Lost Love” (the title of which has just struck me as being very Woodpigeon-esque) - you might have heard Songbook’s opening track “Home As A Romanticized Concept Where Everyone Loves You Always and Forever”. So in a sense, Songbook is old news. But is it good news? Continue Reading

A follow up of sorts to 2006’s criminally underrated My Secret is My Silence, Idlewild frontman Roddy Woomble once again teams up with british folk superstar and uberproducer John McCusker for more understated melancholy folk. Added to the mix here are cameo’s from Radiohead’s Phil Selway and Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake, as well as young folk upstart Kris Drever. To say that the trio make up Scotland’s best new folk talent is possibly stretching it a bit far (and doing a disservice to the likes of James Yorkston and King Creosote), but as a statement it isn’t too wide of the mark.

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‘Secretly’, the title track from this interesting little EP, is one of my favourite songs from this year so far. A world away it might be from the restrained majesty of Fleet Foxes or the pounding cacophony that Nine Inch Nails have continued to peddle successfully this year, I like it just as much. It’s quite twee – some would perhaps go as far as to say cheesy – but its sweet, subtle strings, whimsical style and infectiously charming sentiment make it as affecting as just about anything else I’ve heard lately, which is saying something. Whilst the rest of this five-track EP doesn’t quite match the opener’s quality, this is a very solid, competent, clever and fun record from a very promising band. Continue Reading

The folk duo Spiers & Boden - John Spiers and Jon Boden - formed the huge eleven-member band for the Oxford Folk Festival back in 2004, and following the successful releases of EP E.P.Onymous and debut album Burlesque, they set about working on this second album, Matachin. Ten hugely ambitious and complex folk songs in the English folk tradition, interspersed with three brief “vignettes”, Matachin is a triumph. The fact that these eleven musicians, playing extremely diverse instruments, can gel so thoroughly and convincingly across these tracks is very impressive indeed, and creates a varied, exciting album with a great depth of musicianship.

Boden’s vocals are one of the things that leaps out from opener “Fakenham Fair”, an unashamedly upbeat and idealistic love song - “I never fell in love until I went to Fakenham Fair.” Whilst similarly enjoyable songs “Roll Her Down The Bay” and “I Drew My Ship Across The Harbour” continue the album in a fairly similar vein, Bellowhead refuse to keep treading the same territory - “Kafoozalum / The Priest’s Miss” is a mostly instrumental showcase for the band, featuring several distinct sections and frequent changes in pace, making it a kind of wonderful structured chaos. The frenetic, carnival-esque section towards the end is a great example of the kind of designed madness the band are capable of. “Whiskey Is The Life Of Man” is an enormously fun ode to… um, whiskey, which flies up and down in volume and pace like a yo-yo but never compromises on quality - “whiskey killed my sister sue / and whiskey killed my brother too / whiskey killed my poor old dad / and whiskey drove my mother mad”. Simple, catchy themes are returned to again and again, some are barrages of noise, others dominated by the varied percussion, or whistles, or fiddles, or stripped bare to let Boden’s vocals take charge. Continue Reading

Have you ever seen that performance Bill Bailey does of a song called “Love Song”? If you’re anything like me, if and when you hear the opening track of this album, “Magic Roads”, it’ll be the first thing you think of. I’m beginning to think that “Magic Roads” is either exactly the sort of song Bailey was implicitly mocking with his song, or an incredibly subtle post-modern parody-of-a-parody. Maybe it’s the mention of infections, maybe it’s something in Jones’ slightly odd tone as she delivers her vocals, but the two are now inextricably linked in my mind. Odd though it is, I do quite like it though. Slowly building upon subtle acoustic guitar with percussive shuffles and tambourines, it’s something of a stream-of-consciousness song, but unfortunately is arguably the closest this album gets to greatness.

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We liked them on record. But we loved them live. Wildbirds & Peacedrums occupy their own time and space, an amazing blend of folk tinged wonder with ethereal, almost chant liked vocals… We caught up with the duo of Mariam Wallentin and Andreas Werliin to find out if they could hack our 20 Questions…

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The sixth album from Hawaiian-born singer-songwriter Mason Jennings is a bit of a treat. In The Ever is varied and well-written, a patchwork of solid, well put together songs which together encompass humour, romance and tragedy.

It opens with “Never Knew Your Name” and “Something About Your Love”, which is possibly unwise as they’re the two most straightforward and predictable songs on offer here. They’re satisfying enough, but they’re not a patch on the much stronger and braver tracks Jennings has for us later on the album - luckily we only have to wait until the third track to hear “I Love You And Buddha Too”, a very funny song about Jennings’ view that all world religions are facets of the same thing. “Oh Jesus I love you” Jennings sings, “and I love Buddha too / Rama Krishna Gurudev / Dao Dei Jing and Muhammad”. All this is captured over a jaunty piano line and ever-building percussion. Continue Reading

Every so often a woman turns me to jelly. The last time was Alison Krauss with ‘Through The Morning, Through The Night’ on last year’s collaboration with Robert Plant - who was the bit player in that partnership as far as I was concerned. I don’t know what it is, but I know it when it hits. And now the exquisite textured voice of folk maiden Heidi Talbot has done it. Her voice has several facets: breathy and trembling or full bodied and honey-toned; the Irish lilt coming to the fore for the more traditional tracks. There is a mix of Norah Jones, Natalie Merchant and Sinead O’Connor.

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