“The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta.” Bob Dylan On 2nd Dec 2008 Odetta, one of the great vocalists and a dedicated civil rights campaigner, died of heart disease. This is a review I wrote of her gig with James Blood Ulmer at Edinburgh on April 29th 2006 which was […]
Category: Reviews
Recorded live one evening in Edinburgh’s Stockbridge Church and accompanied by members of the city’s underground folk scene, this short EP is a fragile and haunting thing. St John’s guitar jangles discordantly from time to time, the harmonium wheezes gently in the background, and the eerie warblings of a saw occasionally rises from the ether, […]
Jeffrey Lewis had just played a gig with Jarvis Cocker to celebrate 30 years of Rough Trade up the road at new venue The Picturehouse (used to be ned knife crime magnet Revolution). Those aware of his secret gig afterwards in tiny venue Henry’s Cellar Bar alongside sets by Stanley Brinks, aka Andre Herman Dune, […]
I would consider myself more a casual fan than a devotee of Nick Cave, and so was at first something of an observer at this gig, which was full of fully-paid up worshippers of the lanky gothic Aussie. Seeing how he and the Bad Seeds fed off this energy though, and used it to […]
Amazing how someone with a voice as stunning as HMS Ginafore could lack faith in their abilities. However, Ginafore – real name Jenny Gordon – is infamously reluctant to perform live despite collaborating with most of the Fence collective at some time or another. Better late than never though, as Ginafore has one of the […]
Halloween gifts from Russ Abattoir (censored version) I find it hard to get to as many gigs as I’d like these days. I work from 7am to 3:30pm which isn’t really conducive to mid-week socialising, and after reviewing gigs for a few years, a good few of them being pretty dire, I think I’ve burnt […]
Herman Dune – Next Year in Zion David-Ivar Herman Dune claims that this is the first album he’s recorded when he was happy, and the instrumentation bears him out; upbeat brass bubbles under the surface, Dave Tattersall of the Wave Pictures contributes clean, virtuoso lead guitar lines and bandmate Neman’s clip-clopping percussion would give Eeyore […]
Photo by Alison H (more at flickr) “I wouldn’t want to belong to any club that would have me as a member” Groucho Marx Even though hipster’s fave Bon Iver is appearing up the road at the Queen’s Hall, there are lengthy queues outside The Caves for tonight’s Fence Club and a few unlucky souls […]
I gave the newie from the Aliens a spin yesterday and it’s a much more expansive, chilled out album than the predecessor. Here’s the review I wrote of that back in March 07. The Aliens – astronomy for dogs If you’re expecting Astronomy for Dogs to be the fourth Beta Band album in all but […]
A review of the new album from Herman Düne will follow shortly, meanwhile here’s the one I did of the last, for Is This Music? Herman Düne – Giant I knew little about Herman Düne before last summers’ ‘Hey You, Get Off My Pavement'(other than having heard the sublime ‘Not on Top’) but their performance, […]
Clear-Minded Creative 