Adele’s Moving On!
In terms of female vocalists this year I’m really excited about Adele. The B-side to “Chasing Pavements” is a bluesy, jazzy kind of affair which really reminds me of what Eva Cassidy was aspiring to be.
I remember about early 2006 finding Adele somewhere out there with some basic demos online. She states Eva Cassidy as an influence, but as you might tell from her soulful voice, it’s not “Songbird Cassidy” but the Easy Street, Gospel and “Live at Blues Ally” side of Cassidys music and that’s why I find Adele so interesting to listen to. She’s not so much Amy Winehouse either and in any case right from the start she beats Winehouse hands down. So if Feist was it in 2007, Adele I’m hoping will be it in 2008, I might be wrong, Duffy may come up through from the back in a photo finish with Adele. I love Katie Melua, but she can’t always do what Eva Cassidy did with the bluesy jazz stuff, Adele can and will and does.
Choice in Female Vocalists
There’s just so much choice in the style of female vocalists at the moment. Duffy has an interesting sound there similar to Creys Matthews at times I guess, Remi Nicole fits here as does Julia Stone, the one half of brother and sister duo Angus and Julia Stone, who you should really check out, because they are so ace, words can’t describe!
Newton Faulkner proves suprises do happen
From what I can make out acoustic is back in style, but some of it is street with the R’n'B kids and Newton Faulkner swept the album charts like a British Summer flood with rythmns and guitar drums, so maybe just maybe this year will continue the singer songwriter / solo vocalist revival in the mainstream.
David Ford has been doing very well on the net, Jack Johnson is out there and Alex Nackman I believe is gaining a following too, we just need to duo from Norway, Kings of Convenience back in on the action!
And maybe just maybe I might get my ass into gear and update the mp3blog I set up ages ago to podcast some of this stuff out before it gets properly copyrighted!
Like all good things in life, you have to wait and Feist had done enough waiting to become famous. The Lacoste advert helped and Mushaboom is one of those songs you cannot stop singing.
The iPod Nano one with 1,2,3,4 has just sent everyone ga ga over the feisty songstress from Canada. In my humble opinion the following album track is one of the strongest on the second album behind “The Intution”, the track titled “I Feel It All” is emeded from youtube below.
Feist makes claims on a vocal style called Jahi and in the early days about 4 years ago she claimed that Jahi lets you as the listener find your own space within the song. Her track “The Intution” is perhaps the best example of her real vocal style with all the instruments stripped back and Jahi is why I love Fiest so much. However she also has up accessible pop moments too.
Feist is connected with the band Broken Social Scene and another member of the Arts and Crafters, Lisa looked like she had some new material was on the way, but I’m not sure what’s going on with Reverie Sound Revue at the moment.
Very excited about Canadian band “Reverie Sound Revue”, not least of all because they are fronted by Lisa Lobsinger from Broken Social Scene. It looks like they are working on some new stuff and have put a video to a dreamy indie pop track called “An Anniversary Away”.
Lisa herself has quite the way with hairstyles, but her vocals coupled with the dreamy sound of the band really fuse into a lovely entity which can only make you smile. It all works together and you find yourself 2:30 in without realising it! Lisa’s creamy vocals have to be heard, she really has a dreamy voice.
I can barely contain my excitement, Julia has posted up a professionally shot and edited promo video for These Days, it’s on YouTube, link to it, embed it, email it, watch it.
Check out her gigs page because she’s touring again and this coming Saturday she’ll be screening the video, bluetoothing a free track to everyone at the gig in Cardiff and hosting the gig for us to download. There are tracks on myspace for you to check out, seriously I know I keep up with the relentless Julia posts since like 2005, but you must spread the good news
After a short spell away from the limelight Longview seem to be kicking out some fresh anthemic indie rock from their studio in Manchester. The band sprung two surprise gigs on us as they get back into the swing of organising things.
Emma Scott of Kerrang radio brought Longview Long-view to the Actress and Bishop in Birmingham recently as they tried out some of the new material. They also played The Night And Day in the homelands of Manchester. Having followed the band for a long time I can safely say there is a mantra of if “it aint broke, don’t fix it” coming through and as such the band haven’t changed what they are doing or followed a tangent or felt the need to change as so many bands these days do, which is a very good thing, in fact as you may hear from the free track they have posted, things are even more anthemic than they were.
If you’ve never heard of the band before, Long-view are the kind of band who wouldn’t be out of place supporting Coldplay on a stadium tour, it’s anthemic music which is apparent in the massive hit “Further”. They launched themselves with a debut album titled Mercury and early on had produced a stunning video and DVD single release of “Can’t Explain”. A handful of singles were taken from that album and released and they toured heavily firstly in support slots and then in their own headlining gigs. You’ll find the band have added a hyphen in their name creating “Long-view” after a clash with a similar band name.
Found this gem of an artist lurking around on Overplay. Based in my home region of the West Midlands in England Caroline7, plays out acoustic melodic folk tunes which are booth soothing and haunting.
Likened to Eva Cassidy (perhaps a very young highschool easysreet Cassidy), she fingerpicks lightly and carries a lot of the work with her voice, a lot like Cassidy herself, haunting in some way. What you get with the track Childhood, is exactly the kind of track which wouldn’t be out pf place in an acoustic tent at a music festival, raw and melodic yet predictable. But then again there’s something safe about predictability.
Caroline has been featured on Classic Gold Digital Radio, BURN FM, BBC Radio WM and BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. She also played at Artsfest in Birmingham, which is a massive arts and performing arts festival in the second city of England. Anyone local to Birmingham will be able to catch this jewel in the midlands music scene at a number of venues in the coming days and months, including a local shopping centre in Wolverhampton, bostin! Be sure to check the gigs page if you happen to in this part of the world.
Oh my gosh I’ve been so out of touch with my own site. I had started the listening post as an MP3 blog to stream out some lush music which found its way to me by the interweb or otherwise, but it kinda never really got started.
Kicking off the return post then is a Sweedish singer songwriter, going under the name Hello Saferide aka Annika Norlin softly drifted across my last.fm player today. Almost like that time when that distinct Sunday roast fragrance manages to creep upstairs and draw you in. From reading her myspace page, it becomes clear that her stage name was inspired by an intelligent bus driver in a drug addicted neighborhood, glad that clears that one up then.
What you’ll find here are sharp lyrics and simple instrumental manipulation, telling a story sung by an edgy voice with a distinct Scandinavian accent which at times can fit awkwardly into an Americanisation, but this works to Annika’s advantage here and surprisingly adds something unique.
The track San Francisco, is a spring time tune, very upbeat with an electric athemic feeling. Backed by a full band and backing singers, it’s worth holding on right to the end for the backing vocals slam and baselines, cheesy yes, but very catchy. Valentines Day is one of those simple tracks with classical style finger picking and harmonies, quite soothing.
Yesterday I noticed on very short notice that an indie band known as Captian were playing at the Barfly. So on a spur of the moment thing I booked a ticket and went along, on what was the hotest day of the year so far. I saw Captain support Delays back in March and was impressed by the melodic tunes, their second single and rather anthemic “broke” has been on my summer playlist for a while.
I hadn’t been to the barfly before and while being nothing to write home about it was more than spacious for this gig. I don’t like it when the support bands are very different from the main act, it tends to make the evening feel broken, but that’s what happened. The first act although having roots in Brum, wasn’t really my kind of thing, they had borrowed a member of the Guillemots and a few members of the crowd liked them. The second support from my perspective were better.
Captain took to the stage just shy of 10pm and were really cool, the set was energetic and they played a few of the recent releases as well as telling us that their debut album is out early to mid August. Full of melody and having catchy tunes, the album should be something to look forward to. The band drew in a decent sized crowd, considering how nice an evening it must have been to be outside.
Well ok this is my first listening post, my MP3 blog, should I explain? There has been a new “micro format” emerge onto the web known as “mp3 blogging”. An mp3 blog is a list of links to legal mp3’s which unsigned bands have uploaded to gain exposure to an audience.
I’ll be running these listening posts, which will give you the chance to hear a lot more music from my site than is possible through the occassional podcast I produce. You can listen to each artist and track mentioned in these posts by using the flash music player below or you can run the feed of this listening post into your podcacthing software to have these tracks automatically delivered to you.
It’s not often you get treated to a showcase of very talented bands and artists for £3, but that’s what just happened. Last night I took the opportunity to see Julia Harris play live at a showcase of music at Worcesters, Marrs Bar, organised by the recording studio, ffg.
There was a real mix of music on offer, a guy called Sam Isaac was up first, who really does remind me and others of the front man of Nizlopi. Second up was Girl Friday who played piano and guitar driven indie almost verging on the brink of pop. They were followed by Julia, who captivated the audience from start to finish with not only a stunning acapella version of one of her tracks but also a storming gutsy and powerful performance which threatened to raise the roof. Julia’s influences clearly showing through so much so, in her first track I thought, well here’s Ani Difranco in the room right now, stunning. Headliners Helzuki headlined the night as winners of the showcase competiton, with very a dramatic and varied set.
Julia Direct to the fans
For some months now I’ve been following Julia’s progress checking in and podcasting a couple of her melodic acoustic tracks and it was really cool to meet and chat with her. From what I saw on stage there’s every reason to suggest that she’ll carry on winning over audiences and gaining new fans. Her tracks are now availible on iTunes and HMV Digital and there is a video blog on myspace where folks can check in and stay upto date. It’s nice that as a listener you can pull out of the mainstream and really interact with musicians and support them regardless of location and I believe the bands who are friendly towards the Internet are in for big things.
A well organised and executed night of music and the bands had travelled far and really put a lot of effort in, it seemed like a lot of the audience were in some way connected to the venue or were in a band and so on, but maybe that’s how it starts, so below are the links to the various sites involved. You’ll hear Julia on my podcast soon enough.
In the name of the Father, maybe, but not in my name, On this Jacob's ladder, the only way up is down, One step from disaster, two to make the higher ground
