Phosphorescent in brighton

This was a bit of an adventure. I love Phosphorescent, serious amounts. Recently I’ve been listening ridiculously to Pride and Aw Come Aw Wry and bits to the others too. When I saw he/they’d announced European dates I was so excited until I realised the London one was on the same day as Final Fantasy… Luckily he was playing in Brighton the day before and it didn’t clash with anything and I optimistically thought I could get to brighton leisurely then sit by the sea for a bit and then wander over and listen to a nice bit of phosphorescent then pop home. When I actually got to Brighton it was raining and really cold and I couldn’t find the venue for a while. Luckily when I did find it it was nice and warm and pretty small.

The support was Danny George Wilson who is also in other bands like Danny and the Champions of the World (I guess he’s the main person?) who played at Wood but we only heard them from a distance and didn’t like the voice. The same thing happened here, it started with lovely guitary stuff, very promising, but as soon as he started singing it was a bit old fashioned in a bad way and not that great. He covered My Girl and Born Free which quite a lot of the audience rather enjoyed, not me though.

After a not too long wait Phosphorescent came on. The nice man putting on the gig presented them and it was very sweet and enthusiastic. Although Phosphorescent is basically a one man band, live they are a five piece. The drummer had had an acccident with a bottle opener and had split up his arm and had to spend hours in hospital in Paris but he played with one arm and you wouldn’t have been able to tell. Occasionally Matthew Houck joined in on a cymbal when he wasn’t singing. They played a lot of the songs I like but I wasn’t really too bothered which ones they played because I tend just to listen to the whole albums not individual songs. They did a little section of the Willie Nelson covers which were lovely and they played a really good version of I’m a full grown man (i will lay in the grass all day) and they played Wolves and Cocaine Lights aftew which I went so I could catch a train that would get me back at a reasonably sensible time. Wolves was beautiful as I expected and I’m so glad I got to hear it live. It was definitely worth going to Brighton for this and I will definitely see them again any chance I get.

Akron/Family again

So I was so taken by Akron on Wednesday that I decided to go to their instore at Rough Trade East on Thursday. This meant leaving labs a bit early and trekking over to brick lane which is aages away. I managed to get there quite early but I looked around and read some magazines etc. I was looking at a book stand and so was Seth from Akron/Family so I spoke to him and we had a slightly awkward conversation but it was cool to be able to tell him how amazing I think his band is. Then they played a few songs in a long way without a break between. Of course it was beautiful and lovely (Rivers particularly so) but I think they could have used the fact that they had to be quiet more to their advantage and done more of their 3 part harmonies. I missed a lecture but it was definitely worthwhile and nice to have a trip to somewhere else for a change.

Akron/Family

I’d never been to the ICA before but I found it pretty easily from the bus. I got there and in and found Meryl then pretty much immediately Blind Pilot, the support, came on. I’d never heard of them before but they had a guitar, double bass, banjo and drums which could hardly ever be a bad combination. I really really liked them, they were brilliant. They mentioned that the last time they had played was at “this festival called Wood” and I went “wooh” and so did the person next to me and we looked at each other and it was sweet. Anyway it meant that they had to tune quite a lot but it was not as bad as at Kimya. It’s annoying that I missed them, I think when they were playing Maud and I were napping or taking stupid pictures. Anyway they were brilliant and the double bassist had his double bass in a shoe which is ingenious.

Then after a short wait (MUCH better than Oxford) Akron/Family came on. They had exactly the same set up as when I saw them at The Luminaire last year and I was in the same place too, left of the stage at the front. So again right beneath the bassist. They were unbelievable. Seriously amazing, immediately taking over from Patrick Wolf as best of the year. They did their long extended thing and lots of clapping and at the beginning Meryl got to ring these bells which the bassist handed to her. They played Ed is a Portal of course which was brilliant. They also played some new ones and I was more familiar with them than I expected to be. I didn’t really know the titles but now I know that I loved River and since Wednesday I’ve listened it some stupid number of times. Just the last chorus where they do the “ooh”s over the tune ahhh amazing and the first chorus where they whistle. And then at the end they did Last Year and we all sang and it was beautiful. Then they came into the crowd and sang Woody Guthrie’s America with everyone joining in on the I wanna live bits. I couldn’t really see but still it was lovely. Anyway this was totally incredible and amazing and unbelievably exciting and beautiful. Oh yeah at the beginning they stood round one microphone and did a beautiful 3 part harmony bit which contrasts so amazingly with their crazy improvisey loud bits. Photo:

Patrick Wolf

Firstly this was incredible. Really really amazing. I went to Oxford to see Pat because I thought it would be nicer to see him somewhere smaller than London. The Bachelor is such a brilliant album. Last.fm tells me I’ve listened to it 148 times although i’m not entirely sure how they count album listens. That seems excessive, but it’s a lot anyway. We got there at about 8:30 just as Yacht were finishing their last song which is a pity because I liked it and it would have been good to see more from them. But I had got paranoid that we’d get there really late so the fact that we were there before Patrick was good. I needn’t have worried because we ended up waiting almost an hour until Patrick actually came on. Then he was incredible amazing etc. He’s so so so so so good except when he starts talking then he’s a complete idiot making bad jokes about nakedness and jock straps but it doesn’t matter really. He played lots from the bachelor (obviously) and also Childcatcher (!! I have listened to this sooo much recently and scared everyone with my run run runs) and The Stars and the magic position and the libertine and tristan and accident and emergency and maybe some others, i can’t remember. Anyway all amazing songs which I absolutely love.

Wood Festival

I decided pretty late to actually go to this. I’d been eyeing it for a while but couldn’t really justify it. But then on my birthday Maud told me she was going with Phoebe so I bought a ticket and went with them. Our tent was huge and the ground was really rocky so we couldn’t get any of the guyropes fixed in properly. This was particularly bad because it was sometimes seriously windy and kind of scary.

So on the Friday we ate some stuff and went to the Wood Stage to see Jonquil who I’ve seen twice before and really like. They didn’t play Lions which is weird because that’s kind of “their song” that everyone knows but they played new stuff which sounded very promising. I really really like Jonquil but I’ve somehow managed to lose Lions (the album) from my computer which is a shame and everything on my ipod I lost too so no more Lions. I’ll have to reborrow it from Man or somewhere on the internet.

After Jonquil we went to see KTB because I’ve heard of her before and that seemed recommendation enough to go and listen to her. She played in the Tree Tent which was a big multicoloured circus tent thing. She had a man on a guitar playing with her and her songs were all really pretty and lovely but it was very annoying because people kept talking over her which was stupid because there were loads of other places they could have gone if they wanted to talk. After this we went back to Phoebe’s car to get more jumpers because it was freezing. We could hear the headliners, Brakes, and we did not like them at all. They were boring and loud so we went back to our tent and went to sleep. On Saturday morning I woke up really early because I had slept badly and children started waking up and being noisy and I just didn’t feel sleepy enough to go back to sleep.

At Wood one of the things they do is to have workshops in all kinds of things. On Saturday morning I couldn’t choose between crochet and thatching. I decided crochet but then we had to pay for needles and I didn’t have any money so I changed to thatching with Maud. It was good. Basically we made a wooden frame by tying hazel branches together with string and then we tied lots of bundles of straw onto the frame and then bashed it into a good shape. Fun! Saturday afternoon we went to a talk called the story’s in the soil which was good and soily then went to a singing workshop with KTB which sounded good.

Saturday evening was Stornoevening but before that on Stornoafternoon we got to see them doing a short set in the tent powered by people on bicycles. They played End of the Movie which is my all time favourite Stornosong and maybe my favourite song ever. It was beautiful of course, except the bikes in the background were slightly irritating. We saw a couple of songs by Jim Moray who was boring and I’m not surprised he’s got lots of awards from Radio 2. And Sam Isaac who was a bit average but coincidentally one of his band members was Jose Vanders who I saw supporting Hanne Hukkelberg. Also we saw one song by Dodgy who I thought I’d heard a good song by once but they were old and awful. After giving up on them we had some food then went back to our tent and had a nap. Somehow we managed to fall completely asleep and I kind of woke up and could hear some music which I recognised and I suddenly realised it was Stornoway so woke up Maud and Phoebe and we went and saw Stornoway who were wonderful. It’s the longest time I’ve seen them play (out of 7) and they played lots of songs I’d never heard before which were brilliant. I seriously adore them but I think since I’ve seen them so many times I probably should say hello to them at some point.  So that was Stornoday.

Then on Sunday morning it was absolutely pouring with rain which stopped at exactly 11 o’clock when the trumpet started calling people to workshops. Phoebe had left becuase she had to go to work. Maud and I were firmly certain that we wanted to do “Making instruments out of junk” which sounded promising and fun. Unfortunately it was rubbish, there were only two choices of instrument, shaker or rubbish flute which sounded painful. So we moved on and went and made wallets from tetra-paks which was much more successful even though they’d pretty much run out and mine was made of a sainsbury’s basic soya milk packet but it’s still cool. At lunchtime we went to the bicycle tent and watched some pretty nice “Cycle sessions” or whatever they were called. First we heard Trevor Moss and Hannah Lou who were quiet and pretty. Then we heard Benjamin Thomas who Maud and I both really really liked. He did beautiful guitary picky stuff and his voice was all gravelly and nice. For our last workshop we did more singing which was fun again.

We watched Little Sister which KTB is in. They were sweet. The best thing though was this man and little girl who did some incredible dancing. They were a pretty great comedy duo.

Lastly we saw Karine Polwart who Maud likes a lot. She’s scottish and very nice and friendly. The songs were good with lovely harmonies from her brother and her friend who she lives with. She said she was going to do a sad song but she couldn’t with children running around dressed up as batman and fairies which is understandable. Anyway she was a lovely way to end and after this Maud and I went home and I had spaghetti bolognese then came back to London.

Hanne Hukkelberg

This was at Bush Hall which I like. I got there quite early and sat at an empty table and read my amazing book (The Varieties of Scientific Experience by Carl Sagan) . A few other people sat at MY table but it was okay. The first support was this girl called Jose Vanders who played the piano in a Regina Spektory kind of way and she was good. Nice to listen to etc. The next person was called Dan Smith and also had a Regina Spektory thing going on but in a more masculine way. He did this really good layering thing with percussionny stuff and his voice and it reminded me of parts of the soundtrack to Paprika where there’s the big scary parade. I think the track is actually called Parade (in Paprika). The dan smith song i liked most was Dictator(s?) which is on his myspace, www.myspace.com/dansmithuk

So then I talked to this person at my table called Jason who was nice but didn’t have a very good taste in films and for hanne hukkelberg i moved to the front where everyone was sitting on the floor. I had read that her new stuff was more “rocky” and I had listened to her new album once and I agreed but I hadn’t really listened properly. I hoped that she would still be as good as I wanted her to be because I listened to Little Things a LOT and I like Rykestrasse 68 too. She looked really different from how I imagined. All the pictures of her had been her being sweet and quirky with dark hair and usually looking cosy in a cold place but she was blonde and looked all summery and it was surprising. I liked the old songs about a hundred million times more than the new ones. I have no idea how she can play these new ones among the old ones without thinking, “hang on what am i doing? i used to be so much better and more interesting”. Anyway the old ones were so good. They did Cast Anchor and the Northwind and some others and BOBLE!! which was beautiful and amazing. I’m glad I went but I wish I could have seen her a few years ago.

Andrew Bird

I left this for a while but I want to start again. And i’ve been to so many things lately I want to remember what they were like so i’ll do my best. This Andrew Bird was Andrew Bird on the 11th May at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. I went with Maud and we got there just as the support was ending, Cortney Tidwell. I didn’t like her at all, in fact maybe she wasn’t just ending, I think we heard quite a few of her songs but they didn’t strike me as much good. We found Meryl and stood quite near the back on a kind of balcony bit. I sat on a bar that wasn’t being used for actual Andrew Bird so I had a nice clear view. Only downsides were that my camera had been taken away from me (lens too big… hah) and also there was a fan blowing in my back which was pretty cold and unpleasant but luckily Andrew was nice enough to distract me. I haven’t really got into Noble Beast,  I think hearing the songs first in a church put my hopes too high. Anyway he of course played lots of songs from it and I much prefer them live to on record. Somehow on Noble Beast his voice isn’t as clear as it usually is and his voice is the best thing about him. He played nice familiar ones too, Nervous Tic Motion, an amazing version of Why? (3rd time i’ve seen him and 3rd time he’s played it but it’s still so so so so good) and other good ones. Afterwards I retrieved my camera and met Maud’s friend Elly who is apparently another version of me but not me obviously.

first

(I actually wrote this in January)

Today so far I can’t stop listening to THIS Abba cover (is it ABBA officially? I don’t know, forutnately). I have seen Woodpigeon twice – once at End of the Road and once supporting Andrew Bird in a church. I was underwhelmed both times. The first time I was looking forward to seeing them because one of their songs was on the EOTR website (knock, knock) and I thought it was nice and pretty but then they weren’t really pretty they were a bit average and I was disappointed. When it was as support to Andrew Bird it was only one of them and it was more pretty but still a bit average. Except I think they played this cover and I liked it but it was so un-abba-ish and my Abba knowledge is pretty limited and I knew I knew the song but I couldn’t think what it was. It’s also better with harmony and tambourine.

So yesterday I saw Loney, Dear in the same church I saw Andrew Bird in and also the first/last time I saw Loney, Dear was supporting Andrew Bird. So very nicely connected. It’s a nice church. I went on the bus which was slow but I don’t mind, at least there was lots to look at. The support to Loney, Dear was Blue Roses who were really really good. I didn’t know anything about them, I had forgotten their name until they said it. The main girl had a really nice voice, well it wasn’t really NICE but it was really good and I enjoyed listening to it. They were good at that kind of climax thing that I like. There was a really good song about a storm. Yesterday was also my first gig with my new camera and it worked as well as I had hoped and I took photos that I would never have got on my other camera and would be jealous if I saw someone else with them.