As I’ve been going about my day, I’ve been stopping to listen every now and again to the set Tegan and Sara played yesterday at the legendary Newport Folk Festival.
Tegan and Sara perform at the 2011 Newport Folk Festival.
The girls went back to their folk roots by playing an acoustic set which was just nothing other than beautiful. They did stay true to form however with their hilarious trademark ‘banter’ intertwined throughout the set (which made me laugh out loud as I sat by myself surrounded by people). They stripped down some of their more ‘poppy’ songs, added a piano here and there, and produced mind-blowing awesomeness. I think the stand-out track from the set has to be ‘The Cure’, which was transformed into a breathtaking piano ballad. I’ve already listened to it too many times today. Tegan and Sara should seriously think about producing an acoustic album, it would be beyond amazing.
You can listen to their entire set here at the NPR Music website. I definitely recommend it.
Here’s their performance of ‘The Cure’ (courtesy of wojo4hitz on youtube):
Yesterday Laura Marling revealed ‘Sophia,’ the first single release and penultimate track from her upcoming album A Creature I Don’t Know.
‘Sophia’ is a familiar yet progressive folk release from Marling. The song begins softly and tenderly, and it seems Marling has created some sort of lullaby with her mellow finger-picking and beautiful, calm vocals. After about 3 minutes, however, before it has a chance to become dull, a sudden energy emerges. The tempo picks up and the track develops defiance and strength, with a country-style string quartet reminiscent of something straight out of the Deep South. All in all ‘Sophia’ is a beautifully crafted track. (Not that we could expect anything less from Miss Marling).
Marling explained to Radio One’s Zane Lowe that the (almost) 5-minute song was recorded in a single take, with the live band with her in the room. How many artists can say that they’ve done that nowadays? Amazing.
Again and again she succeeds in proving herself as an extremely talented singer-songwriter, and in reinforcing the fact that we have a lot to look forward to on September 12th.
This Sunday I spent the day in a small town called Barcelos (Portugal) at an amazing little festival called Milhoes de Festa which ran from 23/07 – 25/07.
It was great. We arrived at around 1pm and went straight to the ‘swimming pool stage’ which had various bands and DJs performing throughout the afternoon and listened while we cooled off in the pool. It was a very hot day and I’m sorry to say that in true British style, I ended the day with slightly pink shoulders (despite applying factor 30!).
In the evening we went to the mainstage. We got there at around 7.30pm and watched We Trust – a relatively new Portuguese band – who have become famous with the track ‘Time (Better Not Stop).’ I like ‘Time’ but wasn’t that keen on their other music, which was really quite different in style from their best song. I do recommend that you check out the video to ‘Time (Better Not Stop)’ however, it’ pretty impressive.
After We Trust finished we had to wait quite a while for Electrelane to set up their equipment – which they explained afterwards was because their airline had lost some of their equipment and that they had had to borrow from the other bands.
Anyway…Electrelane were absolutely amazing. I was right in the front row, about 10 metres from the stage, and managed to take some brilliant photos. I loved every minute of their set, from their well-known stuff (‘Cut and Run’, ‘To The East’ etc.) to some of the songs I was not quite so familiar with. They didn’t communicate with the audience much, but came back for an encore to sing their wonderful Bruce Springsteen cover ‘I’m On Fire.’ Never having seen them live before, I was (for some reason) really surprised their musical talent. Seriously, these girls are bad-ass musicians, they totally own their instruments. I was also shocked at how many instruments Verity Susman played during the set. She had two pianos (that she sometimes played at the same time), her guitar, a saxaphone, and of course, sang lead vocals. Serious respect.
I’m very pleased I got my opportunity to see Electrelane play live, I hope they keep performing, and maybe they’ll even bring out some new music. Fingers crossed.
The world heard today, that sadly, Amy Winehouse has died at the age of 27.
I’d like to dedicate this post to Amy’s talent and style which influenced so many other artists. She was truly unique and I was truly sad to hear that she had lost her battle against drug and alcohol abuse.
feelalltheshades 