I first came across the English folk singer Sam Lee just over a year ago, when I wrote about a tribute album to Peter Bellamy. Alongside more familiar names like The Unthanks and Trembling Bells, it was Lee’s version of “Puck’s Song” that stood out, as he cut a fine path through an artful mix of old folk recordings and incantatory drones.
A short week after all the jubilee bullshit, but a pretty hefty postbag these past two days, and some notable downloads, too, as you’ll see from this list.
A day or two before Julia Holter’s show at Café Oto, I tweeted something fairly dumb about not understanding why she hadn’t received anything like the same amount of hype as Grimes this year, based on my admittedly rather idiosyncratic idea that, amidst the reveries and abstractions, Holter has a knack for subtly accessible pop music.
Sixteen entries on the playlist this week, and I should point out that the latest session from the Natch project is, as usual, a free download that’s definitely worth picking up.
What is Lawrence for? Given the acclaim for the recent “Lawrence Of Belgravia” documentary, you could be forgiven for thinking that his role as a British eccentric and pop star manqué is now much more important than the actual music he makes. That his character is more entertaining than his records.
Things may be different now but, when I was an NME staffer in the 1990s, we were forever being accused of building bands up, only to take delight in knocking them down soon after.
A lot of good things this week, and I should quickly mention that the new Uncut is now in the shops (in the UK at least). This link here has all the details of the issue contents, plus there’s a piece/interview by me about Bill Fay’s impending comeback.
To Café Oto, where a guy who goes by the name of Hitodama is making the sort of brutal avant-noise that a colleague is inspired to describe as “entropic deathwank”.
A while back, I read somewhere that Ben Chasny’s next Six Organs Of Admittance record would feature the heavy involvement of his old bandmates from Comets On Fire: it would be a kind of Comets reunion, was the speculation, albeit with Chasny in the driving seat rather than Ethan Miller.