Electric Picnic 2009: the Verdict

A shame to see the company behind Electric Picnic, Pod Concerts is going into liquidation. 'Taxman could pull plug on Electric Picnic promoter' says the Irish Indo but they quote a press release from POD concerts saying the Electric Picnic is now owned by EP Republic Ltd, which is 61pc owned by UK promoter Festival Republic so Pod's financial troubles won't lead to the plug being pulled on the festival. Em, I hope!

Jim Carroll says there's 14 more acts being announced this Thursday but so far this year's EP lineup is the weakest in years. It's short one or two more major league acts but also short on what used to be its strong suit - hot new, brilliant but not very well known acts. Oxegen has continued the trend of sweeping up some of the best new artists that previously would have been more likely to play EP, last year Vampire Weekend and Yeasayer playing Oxegen were a good example of this, this year Passion Pit spring to mind.

For major league acts EP 07 had Bjork, Beastie Boys, LCD Soundsytem, 08 had MBV, Sigur Ros and Wilco but 09 has the Flaming Lips alone in that sphere.

Having said all that, i am still really looking forward to EP - there is still a lot of quality acts due to play over the September 4-6 weekend in Stradbally.

Really lookin forward to seeing the Flaming Lips live for the first time and Fleet Foxes are one of the best bands in the world so those two should be the highlights.

I saw Royksopp do a great festival set at Witnness many years ago and their new album is strong - Lykke Li guests on that and she's also playing, her Youth Novels album last year was brilliant.

Amadou and Mariam should make for great pop festival fare, saw them at the Olympia and Amadou is one of the best guitarists ever.

Plus MGMT should be good.

Bat for Lashes' second album is superb and a step forward from her debut so she could be one of the highlights.

Jape, Lisa Hannigan and Bell XI are bankers for good gigs.

Julie Feeney's new album Pages is one of the albums of the year and i read good reports of her recent Crawdaddy gig.

Liking what i've seen of Imelda May, even if she is rockabilly.

Should be entertaining to see if Fionn Regan still thinks he's been reincarnated as Bob Dylan circa 1966 and Blonde on Blonde.

Marina & the Diamonds - don't have a proper album out yet but the stuff from her EP sounds great - (think Kate Bush meets Lykke Li meets Fiona Apple).

There's some strong techno/electronic acts on the bill with Orbital, Moderat, The Field and Four Tet playing.

Other acts i'm lookin forward to catching

The Walkmen - a fine American band that sound a bit like the Strokes and the National having a baby.

Tunng - an excellent folktronica/electronic folk (?!) act

Bell Orchestre - an instrumental 'post-rock' band who do strings for Arcade Fire, they're a bit like a Canadian Jimmy Cake

Efterklang - are more 'post-rock' - like Sigur Ros meets Arcade Fire meets something more experimental

Villagers sound like a promising young Irish band.

Low Anthem - are a good American Alt country act

Other stuff worth checking out - Roots Manuva, A DJ set from LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy and Pat Mahoney, and on a nostalgia trip, 80s rockers - Echo and the Bunnymen, 80's pop Madness, 60s legend Brian Wilson, and Disco stars Chic.

Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest, Album of the Year

I've been listening to Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest for about a month now and my brain is still reeling with pleasure and wonder everytime i play it. It's not just the album of this year, its one of the best albums of the last few decades, a Pet Sounds, an Ok Computer, a seminal record, its thaaat good. You get the drift.

Grizzly Bear have the classic folk stylings of Fleet Foxes or Sufjan Stevens but married to the experimentalism and sonic adventure of Animal Collective and Radiohead, the melodies and harmonies are extraordinary but so too are the subtly and complexity in everything else here - the strings, the production, all very prog rock to be honest, but in a good way. This year surely marks the return of respectable Prog rock in the shape of this, the Animal Collective and Patrick Watson album!

It's hard to believe if John Lennon or Arthur Lee could hear this, or more realistically Brian Wilson or Paul Mc Cartney, they would not recognise their worthy successors. And well, we know Radiohead adore Grizzly Bear anyhow.

Yellow House

Veckatimest is so good it sent me back to reevaluate Grizzly Bear's last album Yellow House - and it's a very different beast of a record, much more introspective, avant garde, downbeat, very eerie, sad, haunting, oppressively so for many i imagine, reminiscent of the Beatles White Album in places. It's the Grizzly Bear album that people who don't like their bands selling too many records will point to as the 'true' classic should 'Veckatimest' go on to sell a bucketload. But they'll be wrong. As excellent as Yellow House is, and i'll admit i didn't stick with it long enough when it first came out, deeming it too 'difficult' and 'impenetrable', its not the raging masterpiece Veckatimest obviously is.

Department of Eagles, In Ear Park

Looking for more Grizzly Bear material i belately came across Grizzly Bear singer Daniel Rossen's project with his mate Fred Nicolaus - Department of Eagles' In Ear Park came out last year - a quieter, more reflective record than Veckatimest and its also really excellent. So all in all a talented and mildly prolific bunch of buggers!

Really looking forward to their Vicar St show, November 1.

Here's the wrly amusing video for Two Weeks from the Veckatimest album

Grizzly Bear, Two Weeks

Dambisa Moyo, Dead Aid, Aid Blogs, Aid Debates

Unsurprisingly as someone who works for an aid agency, i don't think Dambisa Moyo's idea that pulling the plug on all but emergency aid to Africa within five years is a good idea. Her notion that aid is only helping to perpetuate patterns of corruption and dependency in Africa is unconvincing and as several reviews of her work have pointed out, her thesis argues with a strawman version of the case for aid.

But following the debate on her book i've stumbled across some blogging and you tube clips of excellent vigorous debates between Moyo and others. These debates lead me to hope that the main effect of the media spotlight on Moyo will not be buttressing the argument for turning our back on aid to africa but reinvigorating the case for its defence. I find Bill Easterly a much more constuctive and powerful critic of bad aid so its great to see he's not just regularly blogging but twittering too. Duncan Green has also weighed into the Moyo aid debate, Green's from poverty to power blog has to be the best blog from an NGO type on the issues of aid and development, bar none, and his post on Moyo has a rake of links to strong rebuttals of the Dead Aid argument.

Elsewhere Paul Collier's Bottom Billion is possibly the best general introduction to the problems of aid and development i've read, and refreshingly he lies somewhere between the polarised extremes of Moyo's 'aid is the problem' and Sach's 'aid is the solution,' what Collier calls 'theatrically opposed polar positions'. He falls more in to the 'aid can do some good, it can be more effective, but cannot be expected by itself to produce major economic development.' school. And this clip of him debating Moyo is worth a look.



Collier's follow up to the Bottom Billion reviewed in the New York Times here.

Finally, in this clip of Moyo's debate with Alison Evans on BBC's hard talk , Evans goes a long way to discrediting the idea that aid is actually responsible for African poverty.

Local Natives

The Guardian's new band of the day - they say they sound like Vampire Weekend meets Fleet Foxes. They're not wrong there. I likee. No album out. Three songs on My Space.

East wall, Dublin, June 2, 2009

Took the long route home from Connolly station, had forgotten what weather like this feels like.

Google Wave, Paradigm Shift, Game Changer, much?

An excellent review of what Google Wave will offer here. From the same developers that designed google maps, Google Wave comes out later this year, and does enough exciting new things to justify all the game changing, paradigm shift talk.

It

- fuses instant messaging and e-mail,
- allows for live concurrent, collaborative editing of mails and docs - i.e. it allows edits from multiple users with all users seeing the changes at the same time
- has collaborative building and editing of image galleries concurrently
- lets you embed you tube clips within mails and drag images into mails
- has real time language translation for instant messaging

Plus it's open source with an API for other developers so it's bound to get lots of extra functionality and will link up with other sites like Twitter without the user having to leave Google Wave.

It looks seriously useful.

Jogging Playlists, Part 1

As i slowly crank my lazy blogging ass back into gear, the first of a regular series, music to jog to, tried and tested, the rules are simple.

1. Nothing too melancholic and definitely not straight out morbid or depressing
2. Nothing too slow
3. But not too many fast songs or you'll burn out.

The Talib Kweli, Kings of Leon and Futureheads tracks make me run like the clappers but you get a breather in between. Anyhoo, tracks and links to vids on you tube/tracks on my space below

Talib Kweli Move Somethin





1.Your Ex-Lover Is Dead,Stars
2.Christopher and Anthony, Jape
3.Poison Cup, M. Ward
4.I Feel Just Like A Child, Devendra Banhart
5.Free Money, Patti Smith
6.California Waiting, Kings of Leon
7.Ghost Under Rocks, Ra Ra Riot
8.F.E.A.R., Ian Brown
9.Cassette, Oh No
10.Move Somethin', Talib Kweli
11.Hounds of Love, Futureheads
12.Crawl, Kings Of Leon
13.I Believe In You, Cat Power
14.Revolution Blues, Neil Young
15.Dancing Barefoot, Patti Smith
16.You Never Know (Domino Remix), Hieroglyphics
17.This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody), Talking Heads
18.Bizarre Love Triangle-94, New Order
19.Iceblink Luck, Cocteau Twins



20.Finer Feelings, Spoon

All Names Have Been Changed

Faber & Faber released Dublin novelist Claire Kilroy's excellent third novel, 'All Names Have Been Changed' last week. The novel is set in recession struck, dirty, gloomy, eighties Dublin and charts the course of a writing workshop attended by five embryonic writers and their hero, Glynn, an alcohol soaked, legendary Irish writer.

What makes this novel really exceptional is the joy in language and verbal playfulness that suffuses every page. There is a greater focus on the aesthetics of language here than most novelists display, possibly at a small expense to the strength of plot and characterisation, although it would be unfair to say the novel is shabby in those areas either. The result is a page turner, but not as we know it captain. I found myself turning the pages not so much in a rush to find out what happens next but because what is said, is said so well. Banville is an obvious influence here.

I really liked the constant stream of arch, dry humour - mostly affectionate but pointed mockery of the insecurities and delusions besetting writers and the creative process. There is a strong sense of place too, the novel veritably reeks of Dublin and that's down to more than the proliferation of Dublin street names. In time ANHBC may be regarded as part of the pantheon of fine Dublin novels taking its place alongside Doyle, Bolger, Plunkett, and Joyce. Certainly the added relevance the work gains by evoking an historic recession era Ireland as we find ourselves reeling again in a brand new trough should help it find the wide readership it most definitely deserves.

Here's the Irish times review and Irish Independent review

The return of Patrick Watson

The magnificent, criminally obscure, prodigously talented, bizarrely overlooked etc.... Patrick Watson is back with a new album Wooden Arms.

No Dublin gigs planned yet. Patrick, sort it out please, the last gig in the Sugar Club was incredible.

Some reviews of Wooden Arms and downloads, streams, here

http://www.herohill.com/2009/04/reviews-patrick-watson-wooden-arms.htm

http://www.wooden-arms.com/

http://sixeyes.blogspot.com/2009/04/patrick-watson-wooden-arms-mp3.html

http://www.gigwise.com/reviews/albums/50610/Patrick-Watson---Wooden-Arms


Drifters from Patrick Watson's Close to Paradise, (2006)

2008 Albums of the Year

Can't believe its that time of year again and the music mags have already put out their Album of the year lists. Anyhow here's mine.


1. Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago
2. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
3. Elbow, the Seldom Seen Kid
4. Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
5. Yeasayer, All Hour Cymbals
6. Sigur Rós : Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
7. Joan as Policewoman, To Survive,
8. Cut Copy, In Ghost Colours
9. The Jimmy Cake, Spectre & Crown
10. Martha Wainwright, I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too

11. Portishead, Third
12. Laura Marling, Alas I Cannot Swim
13. Goldfrapp, Seventh Tree
14. Deerhunter, Microcastle
15. Jape, Ritual
16. Ra Ra Riot, The Rhumb Line
17. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dig Lazarus! Dig!
18. Erykah Badu, New Amerykah, Pt 1: 4th World War
19. Lisa Hannigan, Sea Sew
20. Lykke Li, Youth Novels

21. Keane, Perfect Symmetry
22. The Verve, Forth
23. Kings of Leon, Only By the Night
24. Cat Power, Jukebox
25. Santogold, Santogold
26. The Dodos, Visiter
27. Coldplay, Viva La Vida
28. She & Him, Volume One
29. The Raconteurs, Consolers of the Lonely
30. Hercules and Love Affair, Hercules and Love Affair

31. Foals, Antidotes
32. The Killers, Day & Age
33. Peter Broderick, Home
34. Peter Broderick, Float
35. Gemma Hayes, The Hollow of the Morning
36. Crystal Castles, Crystal Castles
37. Vetiver, A Thing of the Past
38. Amadou and Miriam, Welcome to Mali
39. Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, Cardinology
40. Chequerboard, Penny Black

41. The Roots, Rising Down,
42. My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges
43. R.E.M., Accelerate
44. Emmylou Harris, All I Intended to Be
45. The Breeders, Mountain Battles
46. Tapes’n’Tapes, Walk it Off
47. Ray Lamontagne, Gossip in the Forest
48. The Last Shadow Puppets, The Last Shadow Puppets
49. Beck, Modern Guilt
50. Oasis, Dig Out Your Soul