Not exactly 'asked', more encouraged. It seems people get interested in my tales of woe surrounding a magazine I started.

Perhaps not 'woe' (I hate inverted commas and I've used them plenty in this first post), perhaps tales of the rollercoaster of running a project set up out of love and a desire to help the people who matter most in this world get a break from the advertising hungry, big label hugging music publications of yore without any tiny element of business sense.

This sudden burst of inspiration could be triggered by a desire to get said magazine wider coverage, it could be a result of my own personal narcissism, to get more relevant results when you type my name into Google (although if you look at Google images, the first result is of me clearly telling a fabulous joke - I come in ahead of Gareth Gates too, which is nice).

Searching for myself on Google, aside from the obvious personal insecurities this may or may not highlight to the casual reader, it gives me a chance to take a glance back at my personal triumphs and tribulations of what <John Peel Quote>we'll laughably call my career</John Peel Quote>.

For example, I noticed that in 2006, when I did the odd bit of scribing for the still excellent music website Twisted Ear, there is a list of what we/are my favourite albums of that year. They were, in a particular order:

1. Joanna Newson - Ys
2. Scott Walker - The Drift
3. Kazoo Funk Orchestra - Midnight Finger Painter
4. Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche
5. The Flaming Lips - At War With the Mystics
6. Fucked Up - Hidden World
7. Thom Yorke - The Eraser
8. Coachwhips - Double Death
9. Calexico - Garden Ruin
10. Venetian Snares - Cavalcade of Glee and Dadaist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms

Which, although I tend to wildly vary my musical tastes at times, is a pretty accurate reflection of how I feel 2006 probably was for music - not that great. If I were to rewrite the list, the lovely Joanna would still come first as Ys is probably one of the greatest records ever made. No ifs, no buts, any record that has an orchestral score written by Van Dyke Parks is well deserving of greatness.

What I feel would change is Calexico and The Flaming Lips would drop off to be replaced by Alela Diane's The Pirate's Gospel and Trunk records' amazing compilation Fuzzy Felt Folk would rocket up the chart to number three (because The Drift is a phenomenal piece of work).

As much as it pains me, the genius of Venetian Snares would probably drop off the list too, if only to squeeze in Bill Wells & Maher Shalal Hash Baz's quite astounding Osaka Bridge. Other notable mentions from 2006 go to David Shrigley and his spoken word record Forced to Speak With Others, Grandmaster Gareth's The Party Sounds of Grandmaster Gareth, Wisby's Dirty Fan Male and Yppah's You are Beautiful at all Times.

In fact, what do all these changes tell us about music in 2006? That is was pretty good? Or is there a different lesson to be learnt? The fact that no matter how forward thinking you are, the more you look for the next great record, there is probably a huge trail of ingenious music lying hidden in the past.

Currently listening to: Dawn of the Dead - unreleased incidental music (Trunk)

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Damon & Naomi
Within These Walls ••
20/20/20

When I was about 15, a friend passed me a tape in maths class. "My sister got into these guys at university, and I reckon they're amazing too so I made you a tape. Let me know what you reckon." That album was Galaxie 500's second, On Fire, but despite the generosity of the gesture, I wasn't impressed at the time - far too spindly and distant for someone revelling in Silverfish and their lurching ilk - and the tape eventually found its way to the dustier regions of my nascent collection. Times change, though, and when I found the tape again a few years later, what I'd previously taken for limp-wristed feyness revealed itself as an emotionally blasted combination of slowed tempos, sparse if occasionally searing instrumentation and aching melodies, its power somehow multiplied by dislocated and dislocating production. With hindsight, On Fire opened my ears to a different way of making (rock) music, since expanded into a genre - 'slowcore' (cringe!) - by the likes of Low, Codeine et al. In short, I owe Galaxie 500 for changing my life.

Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang were Galaxie's drummer and bassist, respectively, and after Dean Wareham split the band in 1991 (moving on to form Luna with Britta Phillips) his erstwhile bandmates stuck together under their Christian names. Of the two, it's Damon & Naomi who are the more obvious descendants of Galaxie 500, leaning more toward the elegiac and wistful than Luna's more pop-oriented efforts. Each of their previous six albums seems to have been expressly designed with notions of 'sadness' and 'longing' in mind, and have been more about developing an elegantly downbeat atmosphere than penning memorable songs per se.

While it's true that this is never a bad thing in itself, it starts to become limiting when a band builds an entire career on it. The only memorable shift in their outlook came when they began collaborating with members of Japanese psych-rock luminaries Ghost, around the time of the prosaically named Damon & Naomi With Ghost LP. Ghost guitarist and arch collaborator Michio Kurihara is pretty much a permanent fixture in the band nowadays, and his presence continues the subtle fleshing out of the Damon & Naomi sound heralded by that album.

And subtle it is. Now, wrapped around a constant bedrock of strummed guitars and wispy vocals, are translucent gauzes of strings, horns, sax and Kurihara's luminescent guitar work - all beautifully realised, with utmost craft and care taken to ensure that no one part overwhelms the whole in anything approaching tastelessness. And with that, we arrive at the reason why, for all the wrong reasons, this album makes me want to cry: it's too damn tasteful. All the songs are gorgeous, the instruments gliding around each other like glittering shoals in a dappled koi pool, interlocking better than a Swiss watch...and boring this listener to death. There are ten songs here, one of them mentions lilacs, another's about a queen or something, but it doesn't really matter because it all. sounds. the. same. Buy it on vinyl, shut your eyes, drop the needle and play a fun game of Guess The Song; you will fail, miserably.

As I said earlier, it's like they've built the entire album around preconceived ideas of the emotions they want to convey; imagine a corporate brainstorming session where 'wistful' and 'elegiac' are bubbles on a whiteboard and you're pretty much there. It's slow without a trace of the core, and that's a great shame.

Adam Smith

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Alela Diane
The Pirate's Gospel ••••
Names

First things first, this is not a gospel record. Alela Diane deals in the kind of languid folk that, if listened to as dawn arrives, can conjure gothic images of silhouetted trees across a misty field, yet in the full light of day will put a spring in your step and make you smile out at the world passing by. The Pirate's Gospel, originally self-released with a slightly longer tracklist, is Diane's official debut, discounting her limited edition vinyl EP Songs Whistled Through White Teeth and her intricate hand-drawn, stitched-sleeved CD-R Forest Parade. Fans of Jolie Holland will find some distinct similarities with the object of their affection. Take Diane's arrangements, for example. Alela accompanies her rich tones with hypnotic arpeggios on the guitar and little else. Where it does crop up, the sparse accompaniment comes in the form of whistling and handclaps; otherwise the siren is joined by a group of men with swelling bass tones on the foot-tapping title track, a children's choir on ‘Pieces Of String', and nicely blended female voices at various intervals.

Diane hails from Nevada City, California, also home to Joanna Newsom, who first brought her to the public's attention. It's old California out there; everything you see, hear and touch is a link to the past. Giant oak trees, rusting pickup trucks, wooden porches with swing chairs, tatted lace handed down through generations and rivers once fought over for gold. This is the world that informs her music as she takes us deep into the dimly lit recesses of California's collective conscious. It's a place where a father reaches for the rifle on the wall because "they're coming from the woods" and mamas are "a-runnin' too". Here, the mood is of midnight and the spectre of Cat Power lingers nearby.

Music, family, loss and unfamiliarity weigh heavily in the album's lyrics, as they do in pioneer literature. In ‘Can You Blame The Sky?' she asks "can you blame the sky / when a mama leaves her babies behind?", and in the emotionally charged album highlight ‘Oh! My Mama' she recalls her mother saying "use your voice... sing, sing, sing, sing, sing" and wonders whether she will "play the guitar like her father does". There's an element of timelessness to these songs. The change of pace and tone with the light and hook-laden ‘Somethings Gone Awry' is reminiscent of a nursery rhyme or traditional tune, the melody immediately embedding itself in your memory.

Diane's songs seek lyrical solace in odd domestic artefacts, religious imagery and nature, and her voice will take to you to places that are haunting yet eerily familiar. Above all, they are deceptively simple, stripped bare to the bone, as you will be when the album draws to a close. The Pirate's Gospel is a genuine classic, and already the highlight of 2007.

James M Johnston

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Ani DiFranco
Canon ••••
Righteous Babe

First of all a guilty confession: the music of the esteemed Ms DiFranco had more or less passed me by up until now (boo, hiss, shame etc.). Overwhelmed by the sheer volume of her output and by her amazing productivity - 17 albums in 17 years, plus copious EPs and concert releases - the main problem seemed to be where to start. With the early folk? The recent jazzy experiments? The live recordings? Happily, for anyone in the same boat, there's now a very simple answer to the question of where to begin your DiFranco journey: get yourself a copy of her double-disc retrospective Canon and saddle up for a heady introduction to the work of a remarkable artist.

The 36 songs on Canon trace a broadly chronological path through DiFranco's career, encompassing tracks from all of her albums, from her self-titled 1990 debut to last year's Reprieve. The press release for the collection emphasises its status as no mere ‘best of'; rather, this is an "album that's arranged and intended to be played from beginning to end," one made to DiFranco's "precise specifications." Would we expect anything less? After all, DiFranco has long been celebrated as an icon of independence on the music scene, releasing all of her work through her own Righteous Babe label and retaining full control over all aspects of her music. Given the extraordinary amount of material she's put out in the last 17 years, the decision of what to include on Canon can't have been easy, but DiFranco has produced a carefully packaged and extremely well-sequenced collection with a strong sense of track-by-track flow.

The first thing to strike is the wonder of her guitar playing and her lyrical dexterity. DiFranco's songs teem with imagery and detail, and she darts around the tunes with an exhilarating speed and momentum. Her rapid, attention-grabbing playing style is perfectly in sync with her vocal delivery with its funky, almost conversational quality and appealing snap and snarl (surely a formative influence on Alanis Morissette?), and also with her lyrics, which are similarly direct and upfront, full of sharp edges and breathless wordplay. Like someone on a caffeine jag, the typical DiFranco song comes at you in a rush, with a hasteful, even aggressive urgency, a need to get it all out ‘now'. Her music bristles with the brazen, nervous energy of her native New York - brilliantly described in ‘Cradle & All' as "the city that never shuts up" - and feels intrinsically urban with images of fire escapes, subway trains, "men pissing in doorways," "trash on the kerbs" and "traffic hissing by."

That's not to say that she can't also be introspective and reflective, as on the touching piano-led post-show rumination ‘You Had Time' and the measured, meditative ‘Grey'. Indeed, at their best, her songs sometimes spark similar shocks of recognition to those of a Mitchell or an Amos. Witness the reference to "last night's underwear in my back pocket / sure sign of the morning after" in ‘Cradle & All', or the moment in the sublime ‘32 Flavors' in which the narrator pauses mid self-eulogy to acknowledge that "there's many who've turned out their porch lights / just so I would think they were not home / and hid in the dark of their windows / ‘til I passed and left them alone." With her poet's eye for detail, DiFranco builds her songs out of fleet-footed images, vignettes and narrative fragments. Thematically, much of her work takes place at the juncture where the personal and the political intersect. ‘God's Country' dramatises an encounter between the Brooklynite narrator and a state-trooper on some lonesome highway. "This may be God's country but this is my country too / move over Mr. Holiness, let the little people through" DiFranco sings, leaving it up to the listener to decide whether she's addressing God, the cop, or both.

‘Subdivision' anatomises poverty, homelessness and contemporary manifestations of segregation ("America the Beautiful is just one big subdivision"), while ‘Paradigm' is a complex celebration of the political commitment of her immigrant parents, with DiFranco recalling herself as "just a girl in a room full of women / licking stamps and laughing" and remembering "the feeling of community brewing / of democracy happening". ‘Hello Birmingham' explores both civil and abortion rights, and the stunning ‘Fuel' begins with the discovery of a slave cemetery and goes on to take some well-aimed pot shots at everything from clueless Presidential candidates ("Tweedle-dumb and Tweedle-dumber") to corporate culture.

Clearly, DiFranco does not fear didacticism, but her socio-political critiques seldom sound facile or glib. She can be a lot of fun too, and it's central to her appeal that she can crack you up one moment and make you think about society's ills the next. Canon gives a full indication of her multi-faceted personality as an artist, as well as a valuable insight into the evolution of her sound and her lyrical concerns. Meanwhile, four judiciously chosen concert cuts - ‘Distracted' (a spoken-word reflection on the accusation that her work has abandoned politics in favour of safer subject matter), 'Untouchable Face' (a wry kiss-off to an ex), ‘Gravel' and ‘Joyful Girl' offer a pleasing glimpse into the DiFranco live experience.

There is, it must be admitted, a strong streak of self-consciousness about some of DiFranco's work, and it's particularly evident on the spirited but slightly unpleasant ‘Napoleon', an infamous diss to a friend who signed with a major label, which features a told-you-so coda that can't avoid a whiff of smug self-righteousness. Alongside ‘Shameless', ‘Your Next Bold Move', ‘Both Hands' and ‘Overlap' (all excellent), ‘Napoleon' is one of the re-worked tracks which are placed at the end of each disc as an enticement to fans who may otherwise be reluctant to pay out for a collection that probably doesn't include much material that they don't already possess. (A DiFranco rarities disc must surely be on the cards at some point.) But while the dearth of new material on ‘Canon' means that, aside from the reworked tracks, the collection has less to offer long-time DiFranco aficionados, for newcomers to her work this is absolutely the perfect place to start.

Alex Ramon

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Céline Dion
Taking Chances •
SonyBMG

Earlier this year, SonyBMG announced that its Quebecois star Céline Dion had sold over 200 million albums worldwide, making the Vegas favourite one of the world's biggest-selling female artists; not only that, but in the last 15 years she has built up a formidable collection of gongs, including two Oscars, five Grammies and three Golden Globes, not to mention the Orders of Canada and Quebec. She has collaborated with stars as iconic as Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Sir Elton John and Luciano Pavarotti, and released more than 25 albums in two languages, scoring dozens of chart-topping singles in countries around the world. And, in the midst of all of this, she has somehow managed to squeeze in a two-year career break to raise her son and nurse her husband through cancer. The woman has seemingly limitless energy.

It's a shame, then, that all of this success cannot do anything to change the fact that Céline Dion is - and always has been - a redoubtably formulaic performer, utterly dependant on tried-and-tested techniques and seemingly unable to lend any sense of imagination or emotional variety to her music. It could well be that her consistently unchallenging approach is precisely what has made her so successful: doing the same thing time after time is both safe and lucrative. Unfortunately, it's also boring, a fact more than adequately proved by her new album, the inaptly-named Taking Chances.

The title promises far more than it can deliver as Dion howls her way through 17 songs in that familiar, grating, over-loud way that has made her fortune. Rushing straight into the album's eponymous opening number with an inelegant vibrato and hammed emoting, she quickly revisits all of her most familiar faults in track after track. Her rendition of Heart's 1980s standard ‘Alone' contains most of those faults: the mechanical vibrato, the oddly impersonal over-production, the needless vocal runs, and those awful, ear-shattering high-pitched shrieks, all combining to create an intensely nasty aural assault. One of Dion's most consistent errors is her inability to temper her natural vocal power with a bit of softness; equating emotional intensity with volume, this leads to some memorably ugly music - including the execrable ‘New Dawn', a mock-religious horror that will have Mahalia Jackson turning in her grave.

Perhaps the most disappointing thing about the album is that, musically, it actually has potential. For example, Delta Goodrem's Bollywood-inspired ‘Eyes On Me' is a fantastic piece of music, sadly ruined by Dion's caterwauling and her grotesque parody of childish naïveté. ‘That's Just The Woman In Me' is a Hammond-fuelled gospel piece of great colour and flair which, had it been performed by a truly emotional singer such as Nina Simone or even Mavis Staples, would be stunning; instead, we are treated to a bizarre form of evangelistic torture by Ms Dion, whose uniquely horrible attempt to enliven the song with a few off-beat phrases beats Kenny Everett's preacher parody into a cocked hat.

The album's only truly passable song, ‘Skies Of LA', remains as mawkish as Dion's usual fare, only achieving a little more credibility because, for once, she eschews her trademark vocal runs for a decent piece of ordinary singing; still, it's badly over-produced and sounds as though she threw it in just to show that she can do the normal stuff. The simple fact is that although Dion really does have a technically excellent voice, she can't use it to strike a decent emotional balance in her music. Technical ability and artistry are not the same thing; in the classical sense, Marianne Faithfull is a poor vocal performer, but her genuinely heartfelt performances are immensely superior to any of Dion's overdressed twaddle. Ms Dion would do well to learn that before she next steps into the recording studio.

Schmaltzy, over-produced, tasteless and crushingly bland, this is an album to strangle cats to. Taking Chances? Not likely.

Andy Wasley

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Orion Rigel Dommisse
What I Want From You Is Sweet ••••
Language Of Stone

The debut album from Baltimore-based Orion Rigel Dommisse, What I Want From You Is Sweet is a bubbling cauldron of qualities and styles. The string-dominated music has a classical flavour, and many of the songs have a story-telling character. The combination of these two qualities results in an album that sounds as though it were the soundtrack to a collection of Grimm fairytales. The theme of death is also apparent throughout - the words ‘dead' and ‘death' appearing in four of the ten song titles.

What I Want... is an album full of lovely little flourishes. If you listen carefully on ‘A Faceless Death', the alluring lyric "when you die I'll rearrange your bones" is accompanied by the gentle rattling of what sounds very much like the aforementioned bones as Dommisse organises them into a more worthy pattern. ‘Simon Sent For Me' plays in the style of a stately Regency-period dance, though its slightly sinister quality sees it transforming into something of a danse macabre - a party track for ghosts and phantoms.

Dommisse's lyrics are not always easily comprehensible, which adds to the otherworldly strangeness of her music. Nevertheless, the story-telling quality of her writing makes itself felt throughout the album, whether through the lyrics themselves or the way in which Dommisse delivers them. This is never more obvious than in ‘A Giver' - the image of a princess in a castle "where she is kept by a cruel and evil spell" brings to mind countless fairytales of knights, maidens and wicked witches.

The real stars of the show are the stringed instruments - Dommisse on her electric cello and Robert Pycior on his electric violin - unusual substitutes for the ubiquitous guitars that appear here only in a few guest spots. The strings wind their way through the whole album, meandering languorously here and fluttering frantically there. Pycior plucks his strings mischievously through the opening ‘Fake Yer Death' - and why not? There is usually some mischief involved in faking your own death, after all. The strings create a particular sound that permeates the album, but Dommisse and Pycior simultaneously manage to wield their instruments in fantastically varied ways on each different track.

What I Want From You Is Sweet is unusual and wonderful by equal measure. Its rejection of the typical formula of modern music makes it stand out as something a bit magical, and more than a bit special.

Hugh Armitage

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Siobhan Donaghy
Ghosts •••
Parlophone

Flame-haired chanteuse; former Sugababes member; challenging second album. It's difficult not to drag out the cliches when it comes to talking about Ghosts, a record which seems to go out of its way to defy description. Producer and programmer James Sanger paints a backdrop of soft-focus pads and sundry etherealisms which flatter Donaghy's voice and invite comparisons with her ‘80s and ‘90s predecessors rather than her peers. Unlike the smart subversion of the Motown sound by Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson, there's something slightly off about the pick-and-mix mentality of Ghosts - a smidgen of trip-hop here, a sprinkle of Cocteau Twins dream-gabble there.

At times the disc is naggingly derivative - the melody of ‘Medevac' is striking in its similarity to Kate Bush's ‘Running Up That Hill', and ‘Halcyon Days' gives more than just a nod in the direction of Massive Attack's ‘Teardrop' - but these ‘homages' provide instant hooks. As with her debut Revolution In Me, several songs are slow to reveal not only their charms but their choruses. ‘Coming Up For Air' is a slow-burner, but when it kicks into gear it becomes a dramatic callback to Donaghy's debut single ‘Overrated', revisiting and bemoaning her "selfish pain". Also reminiscent of her earlier work is ‘Make It Right', an uncomfortable mix of lumbering soul and Celtic flounce which seems out of place on this album. Much more successful are the likes of ‘Don't Give It Up' (first single, instant anthem) and ‘Goldfish', a sparkling, hymn-like meditation on depression.

Throughout the album, Donaghy's lyrics are hit and miss - ‘12 Bar Acid Blues' finds our heroine in a sticky situation when she attempts to go on holiday, outlined with a wry wit reminiscent of Kirsty MacColl; the occasional amusing turns of phrase throughout the album make simpler songs like ‘Sometimes' seem facile and uninspired in comparison. The title track, an incomprehensible strings of words soaring over a mid-tempo grind with the odd backwards vocal, sounds pretentious on paper but it works. Perhaps the album could have done with a few more unusual moments like this.

Despite being touted as having matured as a performer and co-writer since Revolution In Me, it seems that Donaghy hasn't quite found her own voice yet. While this is an enjoyable record with some very strong tracks, it's not as accomplished as it could be. Ghosts is an admirable attempt to do something different within the pop vernacular, and it is certainly a promising progression. The mixed blessing of this album is that it gives the impression Siobhan Donaghy is still to reach her creative peak.

Callum Sinclair

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The Donnas
Bitchin' •••
Cooking Vinyl

'Girl Power' is a phrase associated with a particular band. We all know the one. In the ‘90s, it was sold to us as something that represented female liberation and a devil-may-care attitude. Young women could dress how they liked, say what they wanted and live their lives for themselves and no one else. All noble ideals, but the reality was something quite different. It was a concept manufactured by old, male music industry fat cats and purveyed to us via a collective of attention seeking shrews, the most famous of which is known more for having married well rather than anything else. It made a mockery of any concept of Girl Power.

To me, The Donnas are a much finer example of what Girl Power could mean. Their music is rough and unpolished - a raucous, punky rampage through a succession of snappy anthems. Vocalist Brett Anderson, aka Donna A, is no classically trained singer, but her voice is perfect for the music. She sounds like someone enjoying herself, and if she isn't Joanna Newsom, who cares? The Donnas write their own music and play their own instruments, and what they lack in finesse they make up for in raw enthusiasm. This is the real sound of girls having fun, not some soulless trash cooked up by a coven of music execs in their lofty boardroom.

That's the girls' sound, but what of their material on this, their seventh studio album? Well, I'm sorry to report that Bitchin' doesn't quite live up to expectations. That isn't to say there aren't some sparkly gems here; each track is executed with typical Donnas energy. ‘Smoke You Out' has its brilliantly screechy guitar solo, and ‘Here For The Party' ends with a fluttering of surprise harmonica, while the album opener unfolds slowly like some strange cross between an AC/DC track and ‘Rhapsody In Blue', instilling the listener with a mounting sense of anticipation, a real desire for the music to start in earnest.

But while the first few tracks of Bitchin' are perfectly enjoyable, it isn't long before a problem becomes apparent. What this album lacks is variation. Each track taken on its own is a three-minute blast of trademark Donnas fun, but strung out together they have an unfortunate tendency to become a bit of a blur. Every song is a variation on the theme 'I want you why don't you want me why would I ever want you oh screw it let's just party'. There are no standout tracks - nothing to stick in your brain - and the songs have a habit of sounding pretty similar. Before long you won't know ‘Better Off Dancing' from ‘Don't Wait Up For Me' from ‘Give Me What I Want'.

Even the most amateurish albums manage a range of sorrow, joy, fast and slow, but The Donnas seem to have forgotten the basics. And that's why Bitchin' is rather disappointing. The Donnas have got the talent. They've got a good sound. They just need an editor, to learn how to pick their tracks better and to vary their ideas. This isn't a bad listen, but uniformity makes this album a somewhat fluffy and forgettable affair.

Hugh Armitage

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Hilary Duff
Dignity ••••
Hollywood

She's starred in a Disney television series, moved seamlessly into film, launched a fragrance and a clothing range, as well as churned out three albums before this one - so, do you love or hate Hilary Duff? It's easy to dismiss her music as hyper-manufactured and vacuous, but shouldn't we also try to positively acknowledge a woman who has made herself into such a marketable product without debasing her personal integrity? Dignity permits room for both. Billed as her most personal album to date, Duff certainly focuses on the world that she knows, a world filled with record deals, public scrutiny, media-invaded relationships, paparazzi and stalkers; it's a heady mix and she explores it all with a bubblegum pop backing.

The inspiration for many of the songs could be seen to be rooted in her much-publicised break up with Good Charlotte's Joel Madden. ‘Stranger' in particular may feasibly be about her ex; then again, it could similarly be about any of the fairweather friends that she must encounter daily in a world where perfect outer appearances equate with stratospheric stardom and where personal truth is often buried by PR. Initially many of the songs on the album sound overwhelmed by their high production values and intense studio engineering, but there's a vulnerability and awareness behind songs like 'Stranger' that defy Duff's 19 years.

I'm not suggesting that the album has many layers of meaning; it does exactly what it says on the tin. This is joyous dance pop, but there's a hint of a darker sting in the tail to many of the songs. The Hollywood socialite-baiting title track is a fabulously catchy, thinly-veiled dig at the likes of Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie who always "have another club to close", people who have built their media empires on the faltering foundations of flashbulbs and fast money. 'With Love', in contrast, orders a reality check, wherein Duff pays tribute to the stabling influences in her life whom she begs to "slow [her] down, tell [her] tomorrow everything will be around". As long as those truths are delivered with love, she's willing to accept them. It's this stability and inherent respect for the people that buoy her that underpins the album and makes Dignity an appropriate title. For all its dance-floor filling beats, the girl portrayed is having fun in a world that gives her the potential to spiral out of control but is reined in by her own integrity.

The quality dips in the middle a little with ‘No Work, All Play' but rebounds with the spectacular ‘Between You & Me', a teen-friendly version of P!nk's ‘U & Ur Hand' that features classic lines like "my love's not up for negotiation / 'hello' doesn't mean an open invitation". Where the first half of the album dwells on the themes of mistrust and disillusion, the second half rejoices in strength, moving on and demanding to be noticed. ‘Dreamer' is a brilliantly happy and very rational take on being stalked; there are few people who could sugarcoat something so terrifying without detracting from its seriousness. Yet lyrics like "I brush my teeth and feed my dogs / isn't that thrilling?" are both funny and pointedly defiant. ‘Happy' and ‘Play With Fire' resonate with the same defiance and a self-awareness of the facets of her relationship that were restricting; it's teenage break-up therapy that doesn't hurt the head.

Exemplified by ‘Never Stop', the whole album is a high octane sugar rush, like candyfloss laced with pop rocks. But don't be misled, Destiny won't numb all your brain cells in a single sitting. Let yourself be surprised and make space on the shelf next to Britney.

Gem Nethersole

Ah, Green Man Festival, why do you mock me? Why do you willingly choose, year after year, to lift your sodden fingers to smear remorse on my penniless face? You know I can't afford to fly to you (or take the time off work)!

Sigh. Yet again, the Green Man Festival of England is providing more sleepless-night fodder as Pentangle announced today that they will be headlining the yearly gathering. I'm talking original lineup here, folks: Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, Jacqui McShee, Danny Thompson and Terry Cox. Yikes. Not to mention the fact that Iron & Wine, Howlin' Rain, Alela Diane, Caribou, and dozens of others are performing too, all in the bucolic eden of South Wales.  I'll probably be sitting in traffic while Bert Jansch is melting faces with a rendition of "The Snows."

[download] "The Snows" from Solomon's Seal

Additional Pentangle UK tourdates after the jump!

Epitomising the notion of being mature beyond one’s years, indie starlet Alela Diane may sound like a greying, motherly figure with a knack for storytelling, but her growling timbre came about with astonishing ease. “I started playing guitar and writing songs when I was 19, so I was a late starter to both,” she says. “It was only because I had moved far beyond my comfort zone to San Francisco that song writing became my way of getting the homesickness out of me.”

Situated in the rural backdrop of northern California, Nevada City (pop. 3,000) is a home captured in the vivid, campfire folk of Diane’s debut album, The Pirate’s Gospel, recorded only a matter of months after picking up a guitar for the first time. Alternating between the warm and the haunting, her songs conjure up the copper tones of faded 19th century family portraits, each one an affecting tale of this former gold rush town. Ironically, it was only venturing away from these pastoral beginnings that inspired her to express herself creatively.

After deciding to leave for Europe, Diane quickly became overwhelmed by the hustle and bustle of its swarming cities, retreating from the streets of Paris to take refuge in the nearest empty church. There, the ideas behind The Pirate’s Gospel began to take shape. “While travelling, I realised that I couldn’t live in San Francisco anymore,” Diane recalls. “Everything just became clear when I was separated from my life back home and a lot of the songs are sorting through all that. I mean it was really scary to leave everyone I knew and embark on this trip not knowing what I’d find on the other side. It was an eye-opening experience.”

Diane’s return home would eventually inspire the traditional simplicity behind The Pirate’s Gospel, an ambience that yearns for times past while paying tribute to a place that has barely changed at all. “It just has a good sense of community,” she enthuses about her native soil. “There are a lot of creative people around and a lot of history there too. To this day Nevada City looks very similar to how it did in 1849. The downtown area is full of old saloons and there’s a little horse and cart that drives around the streets to take tourists for rides,” she laughs. “So having grown up around it, I’m interested in where we all came from…how America came to be.”

The connections we have with history and the sense of belonging they instil are just two of the many insightful themes behind Diane’s music that betray her age and apparent inexperience. Regardless, it’s a maturity that has already earned her a place in the ever-expanding canon of Americana, nestled seamlessly between names old and new. For the moment, it looks like somewhere she’ll feel at home in for a long time to come.

Hello and welcome back to the Toad Sessions. I was a little drunk when I noticed that Alela Diane was playing in Edinburgh as part of the Triptych Festival, so the idea of emailing her label and inviting her to do a Toad Session didn't seem quite so preposterous. In the morning, I thought I was mad and would be laughed at, but amazingly they agreed, and now here it is.

This one was also recorded by Nick at Bananarow and he's done another amazing job - the songs sound absolutely gorgeous. Dylan's pictures can be found at the Flickr page, and we have some more videos at the Song, by Toad YouTube page. Here's the interview podcast, with the tracklisting at the bottom of the page.

Toadcast #30 - Alela Diane & Mariee Sioux Toad Session[audio http://media.libsyn.com/media/songbytoad/ToadcastNo30.mp3]

Here are the sessions tracks themselves. The Cuckoo is a traditional song, and Dry Grass & the Shadows is from Alela's new album which should hopefully be out later this year. Mariee's songs are Flowers & Blood from her recent album Faces in the Rocks, whereas the gorgeous Icarus Eye is an old song from a home release.

Alela Diane - Dry Grass & the Shadows[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/ToadSessions/AlelaDiane-DryGrassandtheShadows-ToadSession.mp3]
Alela Diane - The Cuckoo[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/ToadSessions/AlelaDiane-TheCuckoo-ToadSession.mp3]
Mariee Sioux - The Icarus Eye[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/ToadSessions/MarieeSioux-TheIcarusEye-ToadSession.mp3]
Mariee Sioux - Flowers & Blood[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/ToadSessions/MarieeSioux-FlowersandBlood-ToadSession.mp3]

Here are the videos, all hosted at the YouTube page. Again, the interview is going to have to go up later because I seem to have entirely lost Morgan, my resident editing expert, so I've had to cobble these things together myself. I am going to work on the interview movies as best I can, so they should hopefully be available in a week or two.

01. Alela Diane - Dry Grass & the Shadows (Toad Session) (04.51)
02. The Shaky Hands - Summer's Life (08.36)
03. Johnny Cash - I See a Darkness (11.45)
04. The Holy Modal Rounders - Hesitation Blues (20.42)
05. Neutral Milk Hotel - The Communist's Daughter (24.10)
06. Mariee Sioux - Flowers & Blood (Toad Session) (26.07)
07. Hem - Half Acre (32.29)
08. Bonnie Prince Billy - No Bad News (41.41)
09. Willard Grant Conspiracy - Twistification (46.05)
10. Vashti Bunyan - Glow Worms (53.35)
11. Mariee Sioux - The Icarus Eye (Toad Session) (58.10)
12. Alela Diane - The Cuckoo (Toad Session) (62.56)

Well I hope you like these. The next session is going to be with local band Meursault, and will be the first one to be recorded in Toad Hall. Very exciting!

Vashti Bunyan - 17 Pink Sugar Elephants

Katie Herzig - Shovel

Yoko Ono - Remember Love

Harmony Trowbridge - Flat Bottomed Boat

Matteah Baim - Wounded Whale

Karen Dalton - Katie Cruel

Alela Diane - Oh! My Mama

Susan Christie - Paint A Lady

Lykke Li - Dance Dance Dance

Melanie Safka - Beautiful People

Rio En Medio - Everyone Is Someone's

Joni Mitchell - You Turn Me On I'm A Radio

Festival - Valentine

This week the Edinburgh gig scene gathers pace slowly, but by the end of the week it's going great guns, culminating in a weekend of Triptych splendour that will be the last of its kind. I think there's pretty much bugger all going on today and tomorrow, but Wednesday is busy and it just gets better after that.

This week also represents the last ever Triptych Festival, which used to so splendidly showcase experimental and interesting music around Scotland. I didn't like a lot of what they put on, but occasionally they came up with some gems, and this last one is no different, with the gorgeous Alela Diane headlining the Bongo Club on Sunday. And she, ladies and gentlemen, will be sticking around to record the next Toad Session on the Monday. I am so fucking chuffed about that I could do a little dance!

Wednesday 23rd April, 2008: Angus & Julia Stone & Paris Motel at Cabaret Voltaire.
I'd not describe Angus & Julia Stone as any better than decent, but Paris Motel are definitely worth seeing. They'll be playing with a pared-down lineup and I think the best way to describe them would be as the house band on the Marie Celeste. Spooky and gorgeous.
Paris Motel - City of Ladies[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/sbt/ParisMotel-CityOfLadies.mp3]

Wednesday 23rd April 2008: Super Adventure Club at Henry's Cellar Bar.
I know next to nothing about these guys, and apparently they are pretty new on the capital's music circuit. I've had a bit of a listen to their MySpace page though and they sound pretty good to me: slightly spasmodic, experimental indie but with a slightly more acoustic bent that a lot of other stuff in this sort of territory.
Super Adventure Club - Built in Redundancy[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/sbt/SuperAdventureClub-BuiltinRedundancy.mp3]

Thursday 24th April 2008: Boyfriend/Girlfriend & Down the Tiny Steps at the Voodoo Rooms.
You all know how much I like the Tinies' electronic pop stuff, and Girlfriend/Boyfriend are also well worth checking out. They're quite standard indie, but I like 'em nonetheless.
Boyfriend/Girlfriend - The Greatest High[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/sbt/BoyfriendGirlfriend-TheGreatestHigh.mp3]

Thursday 24th April 2008: The Un-Americans & Found & Frightened Rabbit & Withered Hand at the GRV.
Two of Scotland's best bands, an Edinburgh favourite and a group I've never heard of. The Un-Americans have something of a dense, dirty blues sound which is rather promising, and I've never heard of them at all so definitely worth giving a go. Found and Withered Hand you know all about, and of course Frightened Rabbit have their new album Midnight Organ Fight to promote.
The Un-Americans - Jericho (Bootleg)[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/sbt/TheUnAmericans-Jericho-Bootleg.mp3]

Friday 25th April 2008: Meursault & Fox Gang & Jesus H. Foxx (acoustic) at Henry's Cellar Bar.
You know I love Meursault, but Fox Gang sound really rather good too and I've never had the chance to see them live. Provided I can stay sober enough in the pub after work on Friday, this week could be the on where I finally put that right. Their stuff sound quite mod-like at times, and has a good, funky beat underlying much of it and of course, most importantly, some bloody good tunes.
Fox Gang - White English[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/sbt/FoxGang-WhiteEnglish.mp3]

Sunday 27th April: Alela Diane & Michael Hurley at The Bongo Club.
Triptych may be no more, but they're going out with a band here. Alela Diane's Pirate's Gospel was one of the loveliest albums of last year and I can't wait to hear her fragile, bluesy folk live.
Alela Diane - Pieces of String[audio http://www.matthewjamesyoung.com/sbt/AlelaDiane-PiecesofString.mp3]

- A-sides: ♥♥♥♥

- About: ♥♥♥

- Alela Diane: ♥♥♥♥♥

- Aloha: ♥♥♥♥

Com'è facilmente intuibile, stavo ascoltando in ordine alfabetico.... Forse per alcuni approfondirò (o magari tutti o forse nessuno)... è più che altro un post per ricordarmi degli artisti nuovi (per me) che ho ascoltato e che mi hanno colpito (be' Alela Diane è da un po' che la conosco), visto che in giro c'è sempre nuova musica!

Streams von 3voor12:

Foals @ Motel Mozaique: hier!
Jamie Lidell @ Motel Mozaique: hier!
Shout out Louds @ Motel Mozaique: hier!

Line-Up:

Goldfrapp, M83, Shout Out Louds, Low, Guillemots, dEUS, Be Your Own Pet, Jamie Lidell, DeVotchKa, Foals, Bliss, Efterklang, A Fine Frenzy, Trentemøller, Black Lips, Holy Fuck, The Helio Sequence, Jana Hunter, Foy Vance, Alela Diane, Phosphorescent, Simone White, Kode9 & the Spaceape, The Gutter Twins, The D0, Mariee Sioux, Pivot, Noah and the Whale, Tim Vanhamel, Gutter Twins, Peter Broderick, Ebony Bones, Dulce, Jean Parlette, Agro, Thinguma*Jigsaw, Bob Stoute, Dwight Marica

Trentemøller - Moan

Sur ce coup, le blogger bien renseigné pourra me taxer d'être aussi corrompu que le juge Estève de Plus belle la vie puisque je trainais mes guêtres au sein du label Fargo peu avant la sortie du  (fantastique) premier album d'Alela Diane. Elle figurait d'ailleurs parmi les plus remarquables représentantes de l'americana au féminin sur la compilation Even the Cowgirls Get the Blues, éditée par le même label et sur laquelle posait entre autres Mariee Sioux, première partie, choriste et amie proche d'Alela. Bien, maintenant que les présentations sont faites, en avant pour la revue.

Des femmes, on en croise un paquet sur la petite scène du Ciel, un peu trop à mon goût, d'autant que le festival Les Femmes s'en mêlent y fait étape. Mais des femmes dont la voix vous prend par la main pour vous emmener chez elles, au milieu des verts pâturages, des montagnes rousses et des cabanons en rondins, ce n'est pas si courant. Mais stoppons-là les images d'Épinal même si Mariee et Alela le valent bien (leurs textes causent d'oiseaux, de bisons, du cocon familial...), le but de la manœuvre étant de  les présenter comme de précieuses songwriters, humbles et dotées de voix qui vous changent la colonne vertébrale en sucre.

Celle de Mariee Sioux, qui ouvrait ce soir là pour présenter son album Faces on the Rocks, est celle d'une fée, voilée et évanescente, enfantine et ensorcelante. Armée de sa seule guitare et de son finger-picking galopant, elle irrigue ses chansons de quelques ancestrales mélodies indiennes et se révèle à peine audible lorsqu'elle prend la parole entre deux interprétations. Une grâce d'un autre temps, malheureusement un brin aride du fait de la longueur des compositions et du minimalisme de leur interprétation, là où l'album balaye la lassitude à coups d'accordéon, de flûte et de percussions. Ok je chipote, Mariee n'a de toute façon joué qu'une poignée de titres, le temps d'être sous le charme et de ne pas s'assoupir dans les fauteuils de l'ancien cinéma grenoblois.

Question couleurs sépia, Alela Diane aussi se pose là. Accompagnée de la fragile Mariee, de son père à la guitare et d'un bon barbu type bûcheron taciturne au banjo et au contrechant de grizzly, elle déploie un timbre ample, charbonneux et légèrement soul qui s'enroule littéralement autour de votre gorge, le long de compositions aussi roots que joliment ciselées. Du groove vaudou de l'imparable The Pirate's Gospel au dépouillement crève-cœur du sublime Oh! My Mama, la jeune femme aura prouvé, non sans sympathie, que sur sillons comme sur scène, ses chansons sont d'une limpidité effarantes,  authentiques et jouant de leur austérité pour taper juste à presque tous les coups (à peine ou une deux étaient dispensables ce soir là). Car si son organe,  sa façon de le modeler sans forcer (de hauteurs éphémères à des abysses de rondeur) et son admirable diction clapotante y sont pour beaucoup, Alela possède un vrai talent d'écriture. Cette originaire de Nevada City n'usurpe donc ni son titre de révélation ni sa place au sommet aux côtés des Cat Power et autres Joanna Newsom. Cette dernière étant également originaire de Nevada City, d'ailleurs. Comme Mariee Sioux. Chouette patelin dites donc.

Après une dure semaine, je rentrai chez moi et m'installai paisiblement dans mon canapé, un verre à la main, avec pour ineffable projet de mettre des disques totalement inconnus dans ma platine. Comme par magie, je pose direct "Faces in the rock" de Mariee Sioux dans le lecteur.

Je n'aurais pas pu mieux choisir, le bon disque au bon moment ! Une voix de fée chuchote et harmonise des chansons folks typiquement américaine mais avec de chouettes reliefs amerindiens. Chant, guitare folk, flûtes et percussions indiennes se mêlent pour délivrer un message empreint de poésie, de réverie. On est bien entre Buffy Sainte-Marie et Joan Baez, les ornementations vocales peuvent même faire penser à Loreena McKennitt ou Karen Matheson. On est clairement ici dans un mélange délicat de pow wow songs sioux, de chant aux couleurs celtiques et de rythmiques folk américaines. J'ai passé un moment hors du temps, plané sur les plaines du Middle West et atteri en Californie, dans cette Amérique là, celle qui fait encore rêver...

Mariee Sioux est une jeune chanteuse de Nevada, Californie. Malgré son patronyme elle n'est pas Sioux mais a tout de même des origines indiennes. Elle tourne actuellement en France au coté de sa copine Alela Diane, autre chanteuse folk de grand talent, pour qui elle assure les premières parties et également les choeurs.

"Faces in the rocks" est sorti sur l'excellent label Grass Roots Records :

http://www.grassrootsrecordco.com/home.html

A écouter ici : http://www.myspace.com/marieesioux

En coup d'oeil, la jolie vidéo montée par Andrew Berkeley sur Youtube, excellent travail amateur :

Mariee Sioux: I actually feel that the there is a definite lack of culture present in the area. I don't think that it lacks the arts in anyway but it isn't a very diverse place. In that way I think I was always kind of made to search out some culture and really dig deep to find some connections to roots and things....But I do think that there is a strong sense of community that is always very open and loving to its inhabitants. There are also some alternative schooling options, but I think some of them are struggling these days with funding, so I'm not sure how that realm is doing right now...I think that a lot of very creative people did move there in the 60-80's and perhaps created a very artistic environment, but I don't think it was a hippie town or anything extreme like that. There is a pretty conservative weird side to the area as well which perhaps gets very overlooked, my mom worked for the health department for years and the public schools wouldn't let her teach sex ed to 8th graders or have condoms at the highschools..things like that are kinda weird there and not so open or liberal.

MS: Alela and I have been childhood friends since I was about 3 or so. But our parents knew each other since before we were born. I think we were always around our parents' bands, or our dads jamming together at our houses, so it was a pretty natural thing being surrounded by music with her, though I never played with them or even really thought about ever playing guitar. We would spend many a weekend at bluegrass festivals together being weird little girls. Joanna is a wonderful being, I just remember going to some poetry readings she did in high school, pounding her chest and speaking crazy words... and being aw inspired by her gut wrenched energies, words, and ability to really break out of every box that was happening at the time (even before her songwriting I think)...yeah I would say they both have truly inspired me in different ways.

MS: Hmmmm...wow. What a way to put it ! I feel like the only way I can only answer that is by saying read through some of my lyrics...because singing these songs explains it better than me just typing on the keyboard...I think there is something heavily natural and also supernatural about the musical world....like when you listen to some old old recordings of some indigenous singing its like a boulder just fell in your stomach and literally makes me feel like I have no body. I think it used to be a completely natural thing to have music be magic and medicine in all cultures around the world....

MS: Well, to be honest I don't really know. I never really grew up engulfed in native culture or anything, my mother was always open about it close with it but in her own way, her family was never very into their roots, and for that I think I feel perhaps even more of a connection to it... the lack of it being present in our family anymore really really is a heaviness I think about a lot.

MS: It's kind of the same situation again...my family played the role of being open loving parents. And my father was always playing music and still does. They also really love to live off the land as much as they can. They were organic farmers for most of my life growing up, though now its just enough for themselves instead of a career. My dad always gathers mushrooms throughout the year and hunts and fishes his own game, and my mom tends lovingly to her flower beds. They love working with the earth and growing things and i think that always really effected me to feel a strong connection with dirt and the earth and inspecting plants and little bugs and things. Making connections from my little ands and body with those things around me...

MS: Hmmmmm....well I don't think thats a stretch or anything...I know that certain sounds can hit my hard in my gut...I don't know if i relate really to any particular animal or spirit...I think you can always tell when there is a purity perhaps behind the person/soul that is playing it...

MS: I have been continuing to write write write...I'm always writing, not always songs, but just trying to stay focused on that... though it tends to work better when no on the road in a van with other people all the time...There have been no new recordings yet, but I'm just trying to keep going on some new songs i have and play them a lot live and by myself ...and hope that some more come on their own.....Oh I think I am going to record a Cure song "Lovesong" though for a tribute album coming out on Manimal Vinyl later this year???

MS: I loved playing with everyone on the album. Lets see, there was my dad on mandolin, Gentle Thunder on Flutes and percussion, Jonathan Hischke on bass, and some singing contributors...such as my dad, Dana (who recorded the album), and Jeremiah Conte and GT.....They were so so so giving and lovely and super chill !!! The songs where there are flutes, me and Gentle Thunder recorded live together with me singing and playing the guitar live with her in a little sound proof room...we would just jam it out live till there was a take we thought was the right one and then worked on that overlaying things over so that the kinda power was there in the first layer....I do think that the next batch of songs will be different, and not have all the same instruments. I don't really know yet, going to let it happen on its own when the time comes !!

MS: Well, In the van out here in France we have been listening to a lot of Low. Our van driver really loves them and I have been truly enjoying it as well....we've listened to a lot of Ethiopiques and...jammed some old Neil Young, some of our friends' old bands from Nevada City such as "Black Bear" and "O Cross" which me and Alela were really freaking out about since we loved and still love them and had a seriously nostalgic moment in the van....

MS: I honestly don't know what made up pick up the guitar and be like... oh I think I'll play this thing...i think a lot of my friends weere kinda playing music with each other and were REALLY into their bands they liked in high school and stuff like that. So all of that was pretty invigorating musically...I think it was also when me and my two best gal friends Jaime and Abby were trying to start a girl band called Gale Music...we wrote some songs together and played one live show..haha.. It was seriously fun and I think pretty much opened the doors into songwriting for me...I think music and words are always floating or sitting waiting for us to find them or help move them in some sort of direction...I don't think there is a format that needs to be followed for "music" ever... I think people need to do what feels right always, and always be true to their heart...I love spoken word and poetry and I love music....so hmmm i guess of course !!!?

[download] "Two Tongues" from Faces in the Rocks (Grassroots)

Peace & Love & Psych folk.

(-_-)

• Alela Diane sur MySpace (4 chansons à écouter)
• The rifle - Vidéoclip sur LibéLabo
• Psyché-folk sur Wikipédia

If you're currently at, or are planning on making the voyage to, the South by Southwest (or SXSW in hipster vernacular) music festival be sure to check out the Leafy Green showcases. Spread out over multiple nights and venues, Leafy Green is bringing the heat: Akron/Family, Alela Diane, The Dodo's, Jay Reatard, Vashti Bunyan, and many others.

Click the peacock for details!

Dames. It has been noticed that since the inception of Hurry Home Dark Cloud not a single female artist has held center stage. Further, there has been a distict lean towards music from bygone years rather than more recent releases.

Lest it be said that we are stuck in the past or, worse, misogynistic: it is with great pleasure that I introduce the exceptionally talented Jaymay.

Her debut Autumn Fallin' was released a few months ago and has been steadily gaining momentum, culminating in an expanded March 11 re-release of the record.

Album highlights "Blue Skies" and "Gray or Blue" showcase the complexity she is capable of, channeling both a touch of Missy Higgins and a bit of Alela Diane.

Highly recommended.

"Blue Skies" from Autumn Fallin' (2007)

• j'ai découvert, grâce à l'ami Chris, Alela Diane,
• j'ai réussi à faire fonctionner cette satanée imprimante,
• j'ai aidé Rose à faire ses devoirs,
• après une heure passée à essayer de lui faire lire trois phrases, j'ai prié tous les Dieux pour qu'elle soit dyslexique, ce qui contredirait la seule autre hypothèse expliquant ses lacunes : un sérieux retard mental,
• je me suis rassuré en me disant, qu'au pire elle pourrait toujours devenir présidente du Poitou-Charentes,
• ces réflexions sur le retard mental, m'ont permis de me rappeler de souhaiter un bon anniversaire à mon frère qui fêtait ses 41 ans,
• j'ai réalisé un peu trop tard que la Nouvelle Star, sur M6, avait été avancée au mercredi,
• en grand fan de Tommy Lee Jones et des frères Cohen, j'ai regardé "No country for old men",
• j'ai attendu, attendu, attendu, mais je n'ai toujours pas vu de fin à ce film,
• j'ai pris cette photo de l'horrible nappe orange achetée par Hillary à Ikea

Happy Monday folks! Last night started off like any other night...that is, if every night I went to go see two of contemporary music's most engaging and promising young musicians, as well as one of folk's most enduring and idiosyncratic and unwitting legends. So, yeah. It was a special night. As I arrived at McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica, the aroma of warm cookies and coffee told me that I was in for a treat. I sauntered around for a bit, nibbled on a cookie, and gawked at McCabe's mind-bogglingly immense collection of folk instruments; everything from banjars (a guitar in banjo's clothing) to lutes to cellos to harp guitars found their place alongside ethnic percussion and thumb pianos at this mecca of all things acoustic.

By the time Matteah Baim kicked off the night's music I was already all hopped up on coffee, cigarettes, and cookies: a perfect storm of stimulants. Her set was woefully brief, but the ethereal aural atmosphere she created left me wishing that I had come to McCabe's hopped up on a lot more than sucrose. I had never seen Matteah perform. The melancholy dance of two electric guitars, drenched in reverb and delay, left my eyes transfixed on the stage until her final song concluded.

While Alela Diane was setting up, the audience was given about fifteen minutes to use the restrooms, buy more food, or step outside to smoke a joint. While I was unfortunately ill-equipped for the latter, I did bump into Devendra Banhart and chatted for a bit before we were called back for Alela's set. And what a set it was. Alela, joined on stage by her clearly cool, long-haired father, started off her set with "Tired Feet" which is, coincidentally, the first song on her debut LP. Her father's acoustic accompaniment (nylon string guitar, mandolin) added a dazzling new layer to the songs that I had come to know so well from the record as sparse solo affairs. Her voice knocked me on my ass. After a set that consisted largely of new material (which she told me after her set would probably be released this fall) and a DUET with Michael Hurley, the audience at McCabe's was abuzz. I don't think many of the people in attendance had heard Alela's music before, but afterwards the din of Alela-chatter was impossible to avoid. CD's were flying off the merch table.

Then, finally, what everyone was waiting for: Doc Snock himself, Michael Hurley. As always, he puttered onto the stage in a state of quasi-bemused aloofness, looking at the rapt crowd as if perpetually surprised that people had come to see him play. When he began playing his songs, it was clear that his dexterity on the fretboard has not diminished whatsoever. It was a beautiful mix of old songs, as well as new: fan favorite Sweedeedee, I Paint a Design, The Tea Song, and You'll Never Go to Heaven just to name a few. The master was in perfect form: spinning yarns, cracking jokes, and unspooling songs with a carefree insouciance rare in most performers, young or old.

[myspace] Alela Diane + Matteah Baim

[download] Michael Hurley - Sweedeedee

=tyler=

Amazingly talented and hauntingly beautiful singer-songwriter Alela Diane did me the pleasure of answering some questions about her music, her family, and...the disappearance of our dearly departed planet Pluto.

~~

Naturalismo: So you're going to be playing with Michael Hurley at this Sunday's Arthur event in Santa Monica. How does it feel to be playing with such a legendary performer? Was your song "Clickity-Clack" at all inspired by Hurley's seminal "You Get Down By the Pool Hall Clickety-Clack (Sister Song)" from his First Songs?

Hey everyone! Stay tuned to naturalismo - Alela Diane is going to be answering our questions about everything from Merengue to Mariachi, minus the Merengue and Mariachi.

=tyler=

I know I posted about Arthur's Sunday Nights at McCabes before, but this event poster was just released, and it's too cool to let go. C'mon people, it has a wizard holding a mushroom! Wizard! Mushroom!

=tyler=

Top 25 Albums of 2007

from top, l-r:

Magnolia Electric Co : "Sojourner" boxset (Secretly Canadian)

PJ Harvey : "White Chalk" (Island)

Angels Of Light : "We Are Him" (Young God)

Low : "Drums And Guns" (Sub Pop)

Liars : "Liars" (Mute)

Mammal : "Lonesome Drifter" (Animal Disguise)

Grinderman : "Grinderman" (Mute)

Boris with Michio Kurihara : "Rainbow" (Pedal/Drag City)

El-P : "I'll Sleep When You're Dead" (Definitive Jux)

Vic Chesnutt : "North Star Deserter" (Constellation)

Nina Nastasia & Jim White : "You Follow Me" (Fat Cat)

Om : "Pilgrimage" (Southern Lord)

Scout Niblett : "This Fool Can Die Now" (Too Pure)

Shellac : "Excellent Italian Greyhound" (Touch & Go)

Epic45 : "May Your Heart Be The Map" (Make Mine Music)

Magik Markers : "Boss" (Ecstatic Peace!)

MIA : "Kala" (XL)

Sigur Rós : "Hvarf-Heim" (EMI)

Stars Of The Lid : "And The Refinement Of Their Decline" (Kranky)

Jesu : "Conqueror" (HydraHead/Daymare)

Alela Diane : "The Pirate's Gospel" (Holocene/Names/Fargo)

Six Organs Of Admittance : "Shelter From The Ash" (Drag City)

Bracken : "We Know About The Need" (Anticon)

Future Of The Left : "Curses" (Too Pure)

Earth : "Hibernaculum" (Southern Lord)

Top 5 EPs/Singles of 2007

l-r:

Efterklang : "Under Giant Trees" (Leaf)

Zonderhoof : "Zonderhoof" EP (Sound Devastation)

Joanna Newsom : "Joanna Newsom & The Ys Street Band" EP (Drag City)

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy : "Ask Forgiveness" EP (Drag City/Domino)

Jesu : "Sundown / Sunrise" EP (Aurora Borealis/Daymare)

Top 10 Gigs of 2007

Future Of The Left + Infants @ The Luminaire, London (10 March 2007)

Josh T Pearson @ ATP festival, Minehead (27 April 2007)

Nick Cave / Grinderman @ ATP festival, Minehead (28 April 2007)

Dirty Three @ ATP festival, Minehead (29 April 2007)

Scout Niblett @ Bush Hall, London (21 May 2007)

Isis + Boris @ Koko, London (02 July 2007)

Liars @ Madame Jo Jo's, London (03 July 2007)

Six Organs Of Admittance @ Paradiso (bovenzaal), Amsterdam (12 August 2007)

Sonic Youth do "Daydream Nation" @ The Roundhouse, London (30 August 2007)

Jesu @ Paradiso (bovenzaal), Amsterdam (05 December 2007)

Correctly guess which picture was taken at which gig and I will send you a copy of my "Best of 2007" 2CD compilation (once I've pulled my finger out of my ass and actually made the thing). Use the contact form on the Disclaimer page to submit your 'entry'.

The ghosts of the American night have been set loose, taking to the dark dirt roads of the country...past cabins, bullfrog ponds, and fading cemeteries. Somehow, inexplicably, they've crept onto Alela Diane's first "official" album, The Pirate's Gospel. A fingerpicking style akin to Fairy Tale-era Donovan coupled with a delicately raspy twang create a gutwrenching soundscape that has yet to stop swirling through my ears. Maybe the ghosts found me too.

[myspace] alela diane

=tyler=

November - Magik Markers : "Boss" (Ecstatic Peace!)

The first inkling I got of Magik Markers' potential power was on seeing Elisa Ambrogio doing her axe-wielding schoolmistress thing as part of Six Organs Of Admittance, spewing sheets of noise over Ben Chasny's intricate guitar lines. While I at first wondered whether she could actually play, I was soon bowled over by her instinctive and natural style, effortlessly building towering walls of sound. "Axis Mundi" kicks things off with just such a piece of tortured guitar, the feedback looping into Pete Nolan's driving beat - a better opening to an album I haven't heard in a while. Elisa then sets the writhing sexual tone of many of these songs with the downright dirty: "I left my stink like a mink’s dead gland / All over your mouth, all over your hand", her words bringing "the blood and violence