Glowglobes’s set perhaps best illustrates the festival’s vibe. I wandered into the solar-powered Small World Stage, lay down on a rug and watched a woman breast feed her baby as she sang, with a man strumming his guitar at her side. A few minutes later a couple of people in full Zebra costumes, and persona, [...]
Festival Coverage
Secret Garden Party: Part 1
The Secret Garden Party’s Cambridgeshire setting was magnificent. Driving through the fields of crops, we came to the small valley with a lake at its centre where Secret Garden Party makes its temporary home. Flags coloured the air across the main site, which is based on two gentle hills on either side of the lake. [...]
Music: Reviews
Coldplay – Viva La Vida
Coldplay – Viva La Vida (EMI/Parlophone) August 18th, 2008 5.4/6.0 Coldplay should never have become a guilty pleasure. When they released Parachutes in 2000, it was a tender, fragile little record made by four unassuming young men who didn’t look or behave like superstars. Their latest effort, Viva La Vida, is equally fragile and tender, [...]
Music: Reviews
Noah and the Whale – Five Years’ Time
Noah and the Whale – Five Years’ Time [re-release] (Mercury/Young And Lost Club) August 4th, 2008 5.5/6.0 The observant of you will have noticed that this song was originally released late last year. If you think we’re lying, you should check out the video because Laura Marling still has long hair in it. So it [...]
Music: Reviews
Fight Like Apes – Lend Me Your Face
Fight Like Apes – Lend Me Your Face EP (Model Citizen Records) July 28th, 2008 5.0/6.0 Fight Like Apes are about to put Ireland back on the musical map for the right reasons. Previously famous for foisting Boyzone and Westlife upon us – viewed by music lovers across the globe as an unforgiveable diplomatic faux-pas [...]
Music: Reviews
The Sea – Don’t You Want Me?
The Sea – Don’t You Want Me? (Lusty Records) August 11th, 2008 1.6/6.0 Don’t You Want Me by The Sea has been described as having a fresh punk vibe. Once upon a time, somebody, somewhere, decided Towers of London could be categorised as punk because they sounded a little bit like they belonged in 1977. [...]
Music: Reviews
Beth Rowley – Sweet Hours
Beth Rowley – Sweet Hours (Universal/Blue Thumb) August 11th, 2008 4.0/6.0 Beth Rowley’s album Little Dreamer may have headed top ten in the UK a few months back, but she’s got tough competition in a music industry which presents her natural smoky-lunged competition as women of the moment Duffy, Adele and Gabriella Cilmi. It’s business [...]
Music: Reviews
Alan Braxe featuring Killa Kela and Fallon – Nightwatcher (Show Me)
Alan Braxe featuring Killa Kela and Fallon – Nightwatcher (Show Me) (Eye Industries) August 11th, 2008 4.2/6.0 A decade ago, Monsieur Alan Braxe was 33.3% (recurring) of Stardust, who were behind the irresistible dance hit Music Sounds Better With You. Ten years later, he presents a collaboration with inimitable beatboxer Killa Kela and a young [...]
Music: Reviews
Teddy Thompson – In My Arms
Teddy Thompson – In My Arms (UCJ/Verve-Forecast) August 18th, 2008 2.8/6.0 Teddy Thompson has a wonderful voice. His melancholy duet with Martha Wainwright on her winter 2005 tour was one of my musical personal highlights. Combining on a cover of Warren Zevon’s I Was In The House When The House Burnt Down, it was a [...]
Music: Reviews
Jeremy Warmsley – Lose My Cool
Jeremy Warmsley – Lose My Cool (Transgressive Records) August 11th, 2008 4.0/6.0 The first single taken from Warmsley’s forthcoming album How We Became is a gloriously sweet and geeky confession of infatuation, and the inconvenient havoc it plays with one’s equanimity. Jeremy Warmsley swims in the same folk-poet pool as Laura Marling, Noah and the [...]