Posted: 20/06
Artist: Liz Green
Title: ‘Midnight Blues’ single
Label: Humble Soul
Format: Strictly limited 7” & Digital
Cat Number: HS207
Release Date: 11 August 2008
Website: myspace.com/lizgreenmusic


‘Mid-Term Report No 1 Best New Act’ June 08 Mojo
“Her delicate songs are a perfect knot of grassroots jazz, muddy blues and homespun folk, and recall the kiss of a needle on a brittle 78… you sense that once the world gets wind of her elegant, spooky songs there will be nowhere for Green to hide.”
Observer Music Monthly
“Lilting folk, spiked with venom and stalked by sadness” Sunday Times
“Hauntingly beautiful” The Sun
“Astonishing raw blues” Time Out
“Part Joanna Newsom, part thirties-starlet” Esquire
“Green could quite literally charm the birds off the trees… beautiful.” DJ Magazine
“Beautifully spectral” Fact
“An enthralling other-worldly combination of Billie Holiday and Judy Garland” Flux

Liz Green has come a long way in just one year considering she has only released one single, the acclaimed ‘Bad Medicine’. She has hit everyone’s ‘one to watch’ radars from the Observer Music Monthly to Zane Lowe on Radio One. Added to this, after gracing the Mojo BBQ at this year’s SXSW, Liz impressed so much that the magazine listed her number one in their top ten acts to watch this year and invited her to support Rachel Unthank.

The second single ‘Midnight Blues’ is due for release in August and further demonstrates Green’s songwriting abilities and timeless voice, showcasing her “unique and distinctly British take on the blues” (Mojo). It describes a typical night out when it reaches tipping point; “I was trying to evoke that hazy three in the morning feeling at a house party when everything’s gone slightly wrong throughout the night” explains Liz.

The B side ‘I Do Wrong’ was penned by Brighton’s Stephen Burch who performs under the name The Great Park and is also one third of the band Blanket. The track is exclusive to this limited 7” release.

Green’s introduction to music was an education in pop, via her Dad’s mix tapes. Ranging from the Stones and Chuck Berry to Jackson 5 and Elton John, they inspired Green to pick up a guitar, although it took her another seven years to learn four chords! It wasn’t until she discovered finger picking that she began playing ‘properly’ and writing her own songs. The style she has developed also goes some way to explaining her love affair with country and bluegrass. It was well worth the wait.

Her debut album will follow in 2009. Until then, Liz will be playing a few choice festivals including ‘End Of The Road’ in September where she performed last year, battling against crippling stage fright to an enchanted audience. Since that time she has transformed into a highly charged performer – prowling the stage between guitar and upright piano and using her infamous dry humour to gaud any audience into submission. She is unique in the UK music landscape right now. Look out for an Autumn tour with Tom Brosseau & Luke Temple with The Local.

Festival dates:
26/28 June Glastonbury Festival www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk
20 July London The Bedford, Balham The Local presents "Points of the Compass" £8 wegottickets.com
6 August London The Enterprise, Camden with Peggy Sue & The Pirates
22 Aug Croatia Electric Elephant festival, Petrcane £50 www.ticketweb.co.uk
14 Sep End Of The Road Festival £105 www.endoftheroadfestival.com

Posted: 13/06
The mighty White Denim return to these shores for their first full UK headline tour and festival dates at Glastonbury and The Mighty Boosh shindig @ Hop Farm. They will also perform a special one off in-store at Sister Ray records in Soho on album release day June 23 at 6.30pm.

The already hugely acclaimed album Workout Holiday is out 23 June, followed by the rollicking single ‘All You Really Have To Do’ on 7 July.

They are easily one of best live bands around right now and need to be seen for the full impact to sink in. Here’s a little snippet from recent US session on Daytrotter....

http://www.daytrotter.com/article/1252/white-denim


Artist: White Denim
Title: Workout Holiday album
Release Date: 23 June 2008
Label: Full Time Hobby
Formats: CD/Vinyl & Digital
Cat Number: FTH053
Distributor: PIAS
Website: www.myspace.com/bopenglish


Praise for White Denim:
“They have great riffs and tunes, and like a true rock ‘n’ roll band, sound genuinely hyperactive and deranged” The Guardian
“This lot are local heroes who are spelling out the future of dirt-rock in blood” NME
“Great debut album… a marvellous vision of disorder” 4/5 Uncut
“The most exciting rock act out there right now” Mojo
“White Denim sound like the best rock ‘n’ roll party you’ve ever gate crashed” 4/5 Q
An album of bewildering, blistering invention” Word
A truly remarkable first effort” 4/5 The Fly
“Magnificent” Observer Music Monthly
“Awe inspiring set” 4/5 Independent live review
“The first band I’ve ever seen worth mentioning in the same breath” (as classic US band Minutemen) Sunday Telegraph 5/5 live review
“Fantastically compulsive and irresistible… Ace” The Mirror
“They have the originality and diversity to make a serious global impact” Dazed & Confused
“A beautiful big magpie’s nest of a sound” I-D
“Who knew such a raw and urgent sounding mess could be quite so beautiful?” Arena


Blowing away expectation early in your career is a bold move, but no less than you might expect of a feverishly creative, stereotype-averse band like White Denim. Presented at the end of April, their calling card, ‘Let’s Talk About It’ is a blistering statement of the Austin trio’s intent – a thrillingly urgent, free-spirited, yet terrifyingly taut exercise in garage punk that booted its references (MC5, Minutemen, Devo) into post-millennial touch, while sending out a simple yet heartfelt message about the importance of band-audience communication. It left one impressive scorch mark, but now that smoke from the single is clearing, White Denim are dispensing with any sort of rulebook for their debut album due in June 08.

With ‘Workout Holiday’ (the title refers to the fact that most of the graft was done in time out from their blue-collar day jobs), James Petralli (guitar, vocals), Steve Terebecki (bass) and Josh Block (drums) vault clean over the boundaries of garage rock. Sure, they’ve played in punk/noise bands before, but they’ve also variously completed formal jazz education and dabbled in multiple genres and outfits. Which is maybe why, when pushed to pick their own pigeonhole, they opt simply for “sound collage”. Entirely reasonable, given that the record ranges across country and new wave, electronica/looped fx and art rock, neo-prog, pop and garage psych. “We’re kind of mischievous; we love to surprise people,” admits Petralli.

And how. Opener ‘Let’s Talk About It’ is their raucous yet soulful call-to-arms, immediately taken up by the Sonics and Monks-styled ‘Shake Shake Shake’ (finished in just six hours and bulging with the energy and exhilaration that implies), but ‘Sitting’ – on which Block proves himself a more than capable piano and organ player – affects something that could be akin to Randy Newman’s bittersweet song style (with a crunchier background of course).

‘Mess Your Hair Up’ and ‘Darksided Computer Mouth’ are radically different again. The former is equal parts crazily cartwheeling and brilliantly daring exercise in 3-D production, that flips conventional studio wisdom on its head. It also shows how the band can marvellously turn on a tangential sixpence. The latter is an unhinged, staccato romp that suggests The Stooges and Animal Collective kick-starting a particularly fine party. Elsewhere, the graceful and explorative, instrumental side of White Denim gets to stretch its legs in the light and lovely ‘WDA’, while the conceptually co-dependent ‘Look That Way At It’ and ‘Don’t Look That Way At It’ feed ever more explorations into post-punk/contemporary art pop, gradually surrounding Petralli’s voice in a giddy stomp on the latter track. All this before we get even close to mentioning the ridiculously addictive future single ‘All You Really Have To Do’……

The album demonstrates a breadth and creative brio far beyond that of most young bands, something that is reflected in their ability to groove on everything from Pharoah Sanders to The Monkees (Petralli), Merzbow to Hank Williams (Terebecki) and Paula Abdul to Alexander Scriabin (Block). Equally impressively, White Denim produced the LP themselves – in a studio built inside a silver-metal, 1940s Spartan trailer, parked in the middle of the woods outside of Austin. Block (who lives in an adjacent Imperial Mansion model, vintage-trailer fans) admits that the decision to go DIY was “partly economic, partly emotional. Every time we talk about a producer, I get a little teary!” he jokes, adding that weekend recording sessions were fuelled by “cigarettes, barbeque ketchup and tequila. I’d have a bad day at work or fight with my girlfriend and then seek refuge in the studio – either in the extreme cold or the extreme heat. I’d have the opportunity to get a lot of different ideas down and the guys would just leave me alone. They’d turn up on Saturday and I’d show them what I’d done, which would spark other ideas. That’s probably why the record sounds eccentric – it was us constantly surprising each other.”

All admit that the studio exerts even more of a pull on them than the live arena. “I think we’d all really like to turn into XTC,” quips Terebecki. Not that you’d ever guess it from White Denim’s incendiary shows, where band interaction is so highly charged you can practically see the sparks. Block’s excitement often has him leaping from his stool, while Petralli’s highly-charged yelp sometimes spills into silent, ecstatic screaming, his avowedly humanistic approach to lyrics another neat upsetting of garage rock expectations. “The point of pop songs is to be familiar and relatable on a wide scale,” reckons Petralli, who is a big fan of Gertrude Stein’s approach, albeit “simplified to the max, using really common, accessible language to convey basic human experiences and emotions, but in slightly different arrangements. A lot of my lyrics address the process of writing lyrics for a pop group. ‘Let’s Talk About It’ is that simple.” Judging by the reaction at SXSW and their recent London debut, this basic approach is working very well indeed!

Conceptual simplicity with structural complexity – it’s a tough balance to strike, but ‘Workout Holiday’ does exactly that, with no fuss and no fakery, but plenty of flair. “We’re humble people,” laughs Petralli. “We have a humble studio and our songs just kind of happen. Without wanting to sound cheesy, honesty is a real big part of the group.”

White Denim return to the UK in June/July for more shows.

UK dates:
Sat 28 June Glastonbury Festival
Sun 29 June Glastonbury Festival
Mon 30 June Brighton Audio www.ticketweb.co.uk 01273 606312
Tues 1 July Birmingham Bar Academy £6 www.gigsandtours.com 0844 477 2000
Wed 2 July Sheffield The Plug £6 www.the-plug.com/tickets 0114 241 3040
Thurs 3 July London Cargo £8 www.gigsandtours.com 020 7403 3331
Sat 5 July The Mighty Boosh Festival Hop Farm £50 www.seetickets.com
Sun 6 July Bristol Louisiana £7 www.gigantic.com 08713 100 000
Mon 7 July Nottingham The Social £7 www.gigantic.com 08713 100 000
Wed 9 July Manchester Roadhouse £6 www.ticketline.co.uk 0161 832 1111
Thu 10 July Glasgow Captain’s Rest £7 www.seetickets.com 0870 264 3333

Posted: 06/06
Artist: Port O’Brien
Title: All We Could Do Was Sing album
Label: City Slang
Cat Number: SLANG1050932
Formats: Vinyl, CD & Digital Download
Release Date: 4 August 2008
Distributor: Republic Of Music
Website: www.myspace.com/portobrien

“The sense of exuberance at the sheer joy of being alive… a debut album of group chants and lush melodies” The Guardian
“Contemplative acoustic and melodically stomping indie folk… a beguiling debut” Metro

Sea-faring Californians Port O’Brien have been, ahem, making waves since the summer 2007 compilation of previously self-released songs titled The Wind and The Swell (American Dust Records) made them a Pitchfork favourite, catching critics’ attention when M Ward named Port O’Brien his ‘new favourite band’ and the forthcoming single ‘I Woke Up Today’ the best track he heard all year. “The energy was there and the songs were there… two really simple things that you don’t get very often,” Ward astutely noted. Port O’Brien’s debut full-length album All We Could Do Was Sing is set to bring the band’s rousing chants to UK shores this summer.

Beginning life as a folk duo in early 2005, Van Pierszalowski and Cambria Goodwin penned songs together in the Bay Area. Within a year a rhythm section joined them, adding Caleb Nichols and Joshua Banhart to the line up. In the following years, the band were joined by rhythm guitarist Zebedee Zaitz and toured the US with Bright Eyes and Cave Singers, and the UK with Modest Mouse.

All We Could Do Was Sing has an undeniable maritime theme, stemming from Pierszalowski’s family trade – he spends summers working on his father’s commercial salmon fishing boat, The Shawnee, on Kodiak Island in Alaska. The work is exhausting and the weather either wet or freezing (or both), but the contrast between the serenity of the wilderness and the rigorousness of the labour is at the core of Port O’Brien’s musical inspiration.

Meanwhile, on land and around the corner, Goodwin also writes music while maintaining her position as the head baker at the Larsen Bay village bakery. Her days can be even longer, and the work even more tiresome. After writing parts and lyrics separately, they fix them together when Van intermittently comes ashore. Last summer, Nichols joined the ranks at the cannery, and their cumulative effort while up in a latitude and longitude few of us may ever see, resulted in the 11 tracks on All We Could Do Was Sing. Because when you’re working all day in the cold or in the heat, what the hell else are you going to do?

Recorded in San Francisco, in part by Aaron Prellwitz at the legendary Tiny Telephone studios (where he’s previously worked with Sun Kil Moon, Mountain Goats and Death Cab For Cutie), other tracks were recorded by Jason Quever (of the band The Papercuts) at his Pan-American studios. With lush string arrangements, percussive banjo, raw electric guitar and even pots ‘n’ pans thrown in the mix, paired with urgent vocals, (and occasional yelps) the album provides an ecstatic feeling of immediacy, heightened by song narratives closely based on autobiographical events.

Displaying just this kind of joyous choir effect, is the stomping single ‘I Woke Up Today’, a stirring, energetic romp with Van ecstatically claiming that “in the morning, all I could do was sing!”. Would that all mornings were so exciting, eh? ‘Stuck On A Boat’ with its crying strings and contemplative vocal tells of the frustration of being so close, yet so far away, Van stuck on a little fishing boat, while Cambria bakes across the bay, as weeks go by without having a chance to go to port.

‘Don't Take My Advice’ explores the endless question of settling down while remaining in awe of the entire world still left to discover. ‘In Vino Veritas’, sung by Cambria, expresses the charged emotions of living in isolation. Van closes the album with ‘Valdez’, a cracked vignette to oil tanker Exxon Valdez of the infamous oil spill in Alaskan waters.

All We Could Do Was Sing is a beautifully cohesive memento mori, encapsulating a vividly experienced place and time. Now Port O’Brien is ready to take on the rest of the world, using the little island of Kodiak as a jumping off point. The band will be in the UK for three shows in June, supporting Bon Iver, Vetiver and The Dodos.

Posted: 06/06
Artist: Mechanical Bride
Title: Part II – EPs album
Release Date: 18 August 2008
Label: Transgressive
Formats: CD & Digital Download
Cat Number: TRANS081
Website: myspace.com/mechanicalbride


“Three songs of quite exquisite spookiness” Music Week
“Eerily pretty music” The Guardian
“With a delicate spookiness, there's no denying this girl’s got talent” Metro

Mechanical Bride is 22 year old Brighton-based, self-taught musician, Lauren Doss. Part II – EPs is a collection of her tracks previously only available on limited edition 7” EPs, now made widely available on CD and digitally.

What immediately captivates is Lauren’s voice – at once modest, and gracefully timeless. Evoking singers of a bygone age in one moment, to contemporary folk the next, her warm vocals turn feelings of loss and detachment into something deeply heartfelt.

Growing up in South West London and mixing with similarly artful and intelligent solo musicians, Lauren took her lead from childhood friends Patrick Wolf, Jeremy Warmsley and Ed Larrikin. The latter having employed Lauren’s vocal talent as backing singer, before recommending Lauren to Transgressive who were quick to sign this sparkling young talent.

Part II – EPs features the 2006 debut ‘In The Throes’, a sinister nursery rhymes told in eerie solo piano. Starting with the short but very sweet acapella, the harmony infused ‘Chapel’, leading into the stark piano ballad ‘Poor Boy’ written when Lauren was just 16, and finishing with the plangent acoustic lament ‘Love Is Losst’, it’s an intimate glimpse into the private world of Mechanical Bride.

The 2007 ‘Black Skeleton Sea’ EP is a darker progression and introduces a fuller sound. With a backing band employing a multitude of different instruments from a mandolin, accordion and glockenspiel to tuba and Theremin, the result is an unassuming delight.

Sandwiched between these two exquisite EPs is Lauren’s stripped back version of Rhianna’s hit, ‘Umbrella’. This haunting re-working adds another dimension to the song, a sadness and longing merely hinted at in the original. With plays all over the airwaves across Radio One, Two and Three, to BBC6 Music and Xfm, this is a cover version that truly remakes the song and claims it unmistakeably as Mechanical Bride.

A full-length album of new tracks is due in early 2009. Having released such a magical set of songs at such an early age with Part II – EPs, Mechanical Bride is a rising star to be watched very closely indeed.

Having supported Adem and Bill Callahan in the last month, Mechanical Bride will continue to play shows in the capital over the summer as well as a festival appearance at End Of The Road in September.

Posted: 06/06
Artist: Bowerbirds
Title: Hymns For A Dark Horse album
Label: Dead Oceans
Cat Number/Formats: DOC017 CD/Vinyl & Digital
Release Date: 18 August 2008
Distributor: PIAS
Website: www.myspace.com/bowerbirds
www.bowerbirds.org


“An extraordinary record” The Guardian
“Bowerbirds do for backyards what the Hold Steady’s done for parking lots – translated place into sound” 8.4 Pitchfork
"Only once every ten years or so does one hear a new band this good, this bursting with ideas, this audibly in love with music... It is beyond stunning. This band is the complete package." John Darnielle (Mountain Goats)

Bowerbirds have come one hell of a long way in a very short time since their debut was originally released in July of 2007 on Burly Time Records. After a memorable succession of live performances, Hymns For a Dark Horse was picked up for a worldwide release by Dead Oceans (home to Dirty Projectors and Phosphorescent) and will now be issued in an expanded form (featuring two bonus tracks) in the UK. Added to this, the band have been resoundingly endorsed by John Darnielle (see above), stunned CMJ and SXSW into rapturous silence and received a Plug Award nomination for Best Americana Album of the Year. They will also tour the US with Bon Iver and Calexico during 2008. Just about all who encounter this band rush to clasp them to their collective bosom.

On hearing their music, it is not hard to see why. Records such as this are a rare gift, and in principle songwriter Phil Moore we have the arrival of significantly fecund talent. The rest of the trio is made up by accomplished painter Beth Tacular on accordion and percussion and part-time waiter Mark Paulson adding flourishes of piano, violin and percussion, while all three share intertwined vocal harmonies. Imagine a group of primal pied pipers leading the charge against frivolous modern living, whilst never browbeating or most importantly, forgetting their grasp on song structure and the pop sensibility. And in Moore they have a lyricist who can caress in an aching vibrato whilst delivering stinging couplets. Check ‘Human Hands’ for a perfect example: “There’s rusty prick in the tall grass/Where the barbed wire waits/For a blind horse in a gallop and its sealed and sudden fate/There is hate in the grip of our human hands.”

With so many other album highlights it’s hard to select just a few, but from such opening embracing lines from ‘Hooves’ such as “You’re the kindling, still, that burns below my heart” it is evident that Bowerbirds are in thrall to the songwriting process and all it can possibly be. ‘In Our Talons’ continues with a rattling ditty that is impossible to ignore during the refrain and before you are aware of it, you’re joining in on lyrics such as “You’re in our headlights, frozen, and no, we’re not stopping”. This encapsulates what makes Bowerbirds so special – a heavy yearning heart, mixed with tantalising hooks aplenty.

As with many isolationist talents of late (hi, Bon Iver), who choose to live and breath their music outside major conurbations, Moore and Tacular currently reside in an AirStream trailer on the outskirts of Raleigh, North Carolina, on a quiet plot of land that is completely off the beaten path. This sort of organic and simple way of existing is reflected in their music, but to limit them as outsider hippies is somewhat lazy. Redolent of Sufjan Stevens’ soulful demeanour on Seven Swans and a less frenzied Akron/Family, this collection is joyously sung and breathes with bone-deep fervour. If this really is what living as an outsider can do for your soul, perhaps we all need to run for the hills right now! They understand more than most that life’s struggle is only leavened by simple belief systems. New track ‘La Denegracion’ embraces this idea of bravery with its stuttering swathe-like strings, fused seamlessly with Tacular’s accordion and another killer line from Moore – ‘Stab me in the back; I’ll scratch yours.’

Naming oneself after a bird that lives to produce elaborate bowers is one thing, but this band’s unique call is poised to be heard far and wide. Bowerbirds have a serious message. Their zest for life means that the receiver’s soul shall sing. As we progress through life, at times it seems that placards can only get us so far. Bowerbirds take us to the next step, in an expansive and beautiful manner.

UK tour dates:
August 16 Green Man Festival
August 19 Bush Hall, London (supporting Damien Jurado) www.wegottickets.com
August 20 Windmill, London (w/ The War On Drugs) www.wegottickets.com
Sept 12/13 End Of the Road Festival