We LOVE compiling this list each year. And it feels particularly liberating to almost be back to ‘business as usual’ on the festival front – plus some new and expanded events are going ahead, meaning those in charge of the festival purse strings are confident we’re heading back in the fields this summer. So here’s…
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Jo Schornikow releases Lose Yr Love, a shimmering beauty of a track, and the second share from her upcoming album. In common with her recent release, Visions, reviewed here, this song has a feel of War on Drugs. Lose Yr Love is Schornikow’s exploration of “fear and beauty in loss” which “grew from a real-life nightmare…
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We’re At The Top is the closing track from The Battery Farm’s 2nd EP Dirty Den’s March of Suffering. It is a song about “loneliness and a song about forgotten people”. Unsurprisingly, it’s suffused with melancholy – but so heartfelt and so raw it stopped me in my tracks. It’s a beautifully paced number, commanding…
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Sometimes a fusion between two seemingly different and disparate elements can produce something that radiates a new and unique energy. The newly released track Vanishing Point is a case in point. One half of this collaboration is Richard Walters: solo singer songwriter and a band member of LYR with poet laureate Simon Armitage. He teamed…
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More news for Sea Change festival. Tim Burgess, The Charlatans front-man, best-selling author and listening party lockdown saviour, will play the Saturday night headline slot. Also added to the line up are Porridge Radio, Ethio-jazz maestro Hailu Mergia; the multi-instrumentalist and founding member and keyboardist for the great polyrhythmic funk group Walias Band. Studio Electrophonique is…
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There’s a lot of music out there designed to bring down the heart rate, still the breathing, calm the soul and send you to a pleasant and nourishing place. There is one artist, an eccentric, caring and exotic being, who has made work which definitely has this effect: Alabaster dePlume, poet performer has previous form…
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Those with tickets for Camp Bestival Dorset and Camp Bestival Shropshire have some welcome additions to their lineups – and those still hunting for a truly family-friendly event should check out these two summer events. Camp Bestival Shropshire The newbie, Camp Bestival Shropshire is a stand-alone event with all the family friendly elements of the…
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Australian singer-songwriter and pianist for Matthew Houck, aka Phosphorescent, Jo Schornikow has created an album of alt American indie which ‘explores the complexities and loneliness of motherhood’. Our first peep is this beautiful track called Visions. The new album is called Altar, to be released on May 20, via Keeled Scales. With woozy, reverby guitars…
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The Orielles played at The Trades in Hebden Bridge as part of IVW. As a local outfit – and the one who ostensibly kickstarted the ‘Calderfornia’ plethora of local bands, there was a supportive atmosphere, with plenty of their friends out in the crowd, singing along, word perfect. I’ve probably seen The Orielles more than…
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Cherry Ghost appeared at The Trades back in 2015 as part of the Heavenly weekender. It‘s been a long wait to see them again, especially with Covid causing a couple of frustrating delays. But here we are, on the final night of Independent Venue Week, with Simon Aldred and – for this gig – Christian…
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