Autumn Winter Gigs 2008

Colm Mac Con Iomaire, Whelans, Tuesday Sep 7
Shearwater, Whelans, Friday Sep 19
Bon Iver, Tripod, Tuesday Oct 7
Spirtitualised, Vicar Street, Sunday Oct 19
Holy Fuck, The Academy, Monday Oct 20
Lambchop, Tripod, Saturday Nov 1
Mercury Rev, Vicar Street, Sunday, Nov 2
Okkervil River, The Academy, Friday, Nov 7
Goldfrapp, Tripod, Friday, Nov 7
Fleet Foxes, Vicar Street, Friday Nov 7
The Jimmy Cake. Vicar Street, Friday, 21 November

Best of 2008 to July

3 Five star bonafide truly great albums destined to be regarded as absolute classics by a lot of folk in the years to come

Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend
Bon Iver, For Emma, Forever Ago

7 flirting with future classic status

Elbow, the Seldom Seen Kid
The Jimmy Cake, Spectre & Crown
Sigur Rós : Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust
Goldfrapp, Seventh Tree
Portishead, Third
Jape, Ritual
Erykah Badu, New Amerykah, Pt 1: 4th World War


5 consistently excellent albums

Lykke Li, Youth Novels
Cut Copy, In Ghost Colours
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dig Lazarus! Dig!
Laura Marling, Alas I Cannot Swim
Martha Wainwright, I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too


2 Quality albums

Cat Power, Jukebox
The Raconteurs, Consolers of the Lonely

7 intermittently excellent efforts

Santogold, Santogold
Hercules and Love Affair, Hercules and Love Affair
Crystal Castles, Crystal Castles
Beck, Modern Guilt
The Dodos, Visiter
Gemma Hayes, The Hollow of the Morning
My Morning Jacket, Evil Urges

7 good, solid but not amazing albums

Coldplay, Viva La Vida
R.E.M., Accelerate
Foals, Antidotes
The Breeders, Mountain Battles
Tapes’n’Tapes, Walk it Off
The Roots, Rising Down,
Vetiver, A Thing of the Past

Electric Picnic Line Up Final Verdict

An almost final verdict on the Electric Picnic line-up - can’t see them adding too many acts in the next month or so.

The line up features as has always been the case, less hugely well known successful artists than Oxegen but a lot of acts that have released brilliant albums over the last year or so including rock royalty Sigur Ros, Wilco, Elbow, the Breeders and Tindersticks.

Some of the best electronic artists out there in Modeselktor and Crystal Castles, and lets not forget Underworld. Great dance oriented acts in Cut Copy, Santogold and Hercules and Love Affair. Backed up by lesser known quality electronic/dance in Digitalism, the Presets, and Midnight Juggernauts.

Plus Goldfrapp whose new album is amazing. And the legendary My Bloody Valentine.

Some of the best DJ’s in the world with A-trak, Diplo, and David Holmes.

One of the best hip hop acts bar none in the Roots.

A strong selection of Irish talent with Jape, Gemma Hayes, Cathy Davey, Lisa Hannigan, and Adrian Crowley.

Some very fine acts in the singer songwriter folk/alt country range with the Dodos, Bright Eye’s Conor Oberst, Stephanie Dosen, Juana Molina, Louise Rhodes and Terry Callier.

Franz Ferdinand, Foals and Gomez filling out the supply of decent guitar bands.

Plus you’ve got the Balanescu Quartet, Tinariwen, and the Congoes so its not all indie rock/dance.

All in all there’s over 40 acts I’d like to see playing at the Electric Picnic.....*

Sigur Ros
My Bloody Valentine
Wilco
Goldfrapp
Elbow
The Breeders
The Dodos
Cut Copy
Laura Marling
Santogold
Gemma Hayes
Modeselektor
Franz Ferdinand
Hercules and Love Affair
Jape
Stephanie Dosen
The Roots
Underworld
Dan Deacon
Crystal Castles
Tindersticks
David Kitt
Balanescu Quartet
Juana Molina
Martina Topley Bird
Cathy Davey
Foals
Conor Oberst
Lisa Hannigan
Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks
Tinariwen
Joan as Policewoman
James Yorkston
David Holmes
Terry Callier
Louise Rhodes
New Young Pony Club
A-Trak
The Congos
Diplo
Adrian Crowley
Midnight Juggernauts
Booka Shade
Pivot
The Presets
Digitalism
The Herbaliser
Nitin Sawhney
Gomez
CSS
Duffy
Kila
Rachel Unthank & The Winter Set
Josh Ritter
Autamata
Vivienne Long


*updated July 21

Fair enough it is too dear this year but I really can’t knock the line-up.

Oxegen

As Oxegen looms I’m wishing I had the stomach to take all those puking, mud throwing, food dropping teenagers that it attracts. And for the same strange, music nerd urge that motivates all these posts, I feel the urge to deconstruct the Oxegen and Electric Picnic line ups!

This year’s Oxegen line-up is definitely the best one I can remember.

MCD obviously have a huge amount of money and the Oxegen approach says ‘forget about the scummy environment and feel the line up.’ The line up excels in bringing together some of the best mainstream rock bands in the world - REM, the Verve, the Raconteurs, Kings of Leon, Band of Horses, the National, Interpol, Manic Street Preachers.

Two of the best new bands out there in the fantastic Vampire Weekend and Yeasayer and a few other next big/current big things with White Denim, Black Kids, MGMT. Plus Battles and Cat Power adding a bit of extra ‘alternative music scene’ quality.

Its got a decent representation of dancey stuff - Justice, Hot Chip, Aphex Twin and Chemical Brothers, Go Team!

Some of the best of Irish talent in there with Glen Hansard’s Swell Season and Bell XI

All in all you’ve got about 30 quality acts in there with...

Vampire Weekend
The National
My Morning Jacket
Kings of Leon
The Raconteurs
REM
Yeasayer
Band of Horses
Cat Power
Editors
Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
The Verve
Interpol
Bell XI
The Go! Team
White Denim
Black Kids
Aphex Twin
Hot Chip
Delays
Battles
Justice
The Zutons
Manic Street Preachers
The Charlatans
The Ting Tings
Richard Hawley
Chemical Brothers
Roisin Murphy
MGMT
Deus
Holy Fuck
Rage Against the Machine

BUT the Electric Picnic lineup is much, much better than pretty much everyone I’ve talked seems to think it is. More on that in he next post.

Future Days - Jape, Dan Deacon, Deerhunter.

Fair play to the Foggy Notions peops for an excellent night at Vicar St on Saturday. Was going to the gig thinking, 'darn, i really should not be missing Fleet Foxes' but Jape was great fun. The only thing i'd heard from him before last night was the ubiquitous 'Floating' but he puts on a great show aided by that hilarious comedy moustache - photos on Nialler 9's blog.

Downloaded Jape's new album Ritual from itunes this afternoon and its a breath of fresh air - brilliant - hard to categorise this guy - electrorock seems to be the term bandied about for him online - add pop to that and it just about works. Comparisons to Hot Chip and David Kitt are fair. There's a lot of humour and an unpretentous vibe but serious songwriting craft here too. Categories aside, there's lots of catchy tunes and Ritual has made me smile a good bit today. Oh and it feels like a Summer album so good timing.


Dan Deacon lived up to the hype i've heard about his live gigs - i didn't know they were like going back to pre-school with running around the circle type 'exercises' though. Definitely helps loosen people up a bit!

Deerhunter were excellent - hadn't heard any of their stuff before - they're like a mix of Animal Collective/Velvet Underground/Krautrock/Jesus and Mary Chain/BRMC/Sereena Maneesh.


White Williams and High Places did nothing for me at all but 3 out of 5 is pretty good and at €22, the gig was great value.

Electric Picnic More Acts Announced Tomorrow Maybe

According to Jim Carroll, King of irish gig leak news and folks on the EP forum, Electric Picnic's organisers will announce a bunch of acts tomorrow.

There's already a few crackin acts who've put the EP on their My Space page but haven't been announced by the festival organisers.

Elbow
Gemma Hayes
Modeselktor
Cut Copy
Crystal Castles

Fleet Foxes

Jaw droppingly, scarily brilliant debut album coming out from these Fleet Foxes guys next week. They're streaming the whole album on my space.

Big sixties influences - Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and Love at times. And for newer stuff, If you like Midlake, My Morning Jacket, Band of Horses, Devendra Banhart, Animal Collective, Bon Iver - you'll love this. On first listen, this album sounds better than anything all of the above have produced thus far but maybe i'm being a bit rash in my judgement.

They play Whelan's in Dublin on June 14.

The Great White Hopes

So as we enter the second quarter of the year, of all the newly trumpeted artists, who’s lived up to the hype?

The one album from a new band that is as brilliant as the world and its wife’s music critics say it is, is Vampire Weekend. It's all been said - the songs might sound throwaway and trite at first, but they’re intricate and indispensable after a couple of listens. And they do sound like Paul Simon’s Graceland meets the Strokes or the Smiths. It's all true.

The other stand out for me is Laura Marling’s Alas I Cannot Swim. It is absolutely bizarre that a teenager has delivered an album as accomplished and mature as this. Marling has been underhyped in the blogosphere, partly because she hasn’t got her album released in the US yet, but she's got a fair bit of coverage in the British music press. My impression of the scattering of British reviews I’ve read is that people are seriously underrating her. 'Alas' is a classic grower album, and while the initial impression for most people hearing it for the first time may well be. ‘hey, there’s nothing as catchy as the opener, ‘Ghosts’ on this',sticking with it really pays off . She’s not a million miles away from Beth Orton or earlier Joni Mitchell if you’re looking for comparisions. There's a real depth there.

The American critics are getting worked up by this Bon Iver guy. In the rush to compare him to Iron & Wine and Bonnie Prince Billy, how come nobody’s mentioned John Martyn?! Fine album whoever he sounds like.

Hercules and Love Affair’s debut is also worth the hype. And Foals' Antidotes didn’t blow me away but it is good - essentially Bloc Party's first album meets a bit of Fela Kuti meets early U2 though I’m sure they hate the last comparison.

Goddamn, that's beautiful: 5 songs to stop you in your tracks.

Four tracks from this year that made me think, ‘goddamn, that’s beautiful, I want to play that again and again’. Sadly only the Laura Marling one has an ‘official’ video. It is fab though.

Restacks by Bon Iver

Jesus wept, how gorgeous is this song?! Good album too, though nothing else touches this.



Clowns by Goldfrapp
Its like Kate Bush or the Cocteau Twins at their best (with really silly lyrics).




Starlings by Elbow

Some of the finest lyrics I’ve ever heard and a startlingly original arrangement.




Go Slowly by Radiohead

Thom Yorke’s vocals on this - bloody hell!




Ghosts by Laura Marling

From her debut Alas, I Cannot Swim

Electric Picnic Line Up: the Verdict

Well, it strikes me as a good if not great line up to coin a dunphyism . Its about 7 or 8 acts short of being a great line up.

The Positives

Sigur Ros, Wilco , and MBV are on there and they’re three of my favourite bands ever. The new Goldfrapp album is super so she’s getting a special mention too.

Pretty pleased to see the Breeders, Tindersticks, the Roots, Juana Molina, Balanescu Quartet, Lou Rhodes, Lisa Hannigan, Cathy Davey and Underworld there. And Franz Ferdinand even though its obviously not the done thing to admit to liking them anymore!

The Negatives

Would be interested to see if these Foals guys live up to the hype and Micah P Hinson too, but overall there seems to be a distinct lack of fresh new acts compared to previous years line-ups and quite a few acts in the 'I’ve never heard of them category' - One Day International, The Yard Dogs, Tobias Froberg, Boss Volenti, Dawn Landes, Constantines, Yacht, Lionheart Brothers, Large Mound, Emmy the Great, Kormac & the BSQ Band, Silver Apples. Nope, new to me.

There are a few acts that fall into the well past their sell by date/not my cup of tea front on here too- most obviously Christy Moore, Sex Pistols, and George Clinton.

What does the line-up need to go from good to great?

So not naming acts that played last year, or acts playing at that hideous puking teenagers festival at punchestown, or those that don't have a new album to promote, who are we left with?

Of course Portishead would be a pretty great start - the new album is excellent, they’ve still got it.

And how about some quality indie fare? Panda Bear, Beirut, Patrick Watson, Elbow, Feist, Iron & Wine, Spoon, Tapes’n’Tapes, Midlake, Joanna Newsom, Martha Wainwright?

Some good newish acts - Hercules and Love Affair, Vampire Weekend, Yeasayer, Laura Marling maybe?

Nick Cave appearing with the bad seeds and playing his brilliant new album instead of the tedious bad joke that is the Grinderman’s oeuvre would help.

Another quality dance act? Modeselektor, Field.

Some hip hop? Del tha funky homespun, Dizee Rascal maybe?

I'd like Kittser and Gemma Hayes in there too.