Favourite band
Saddle Creek
Hounds of Love
Heads Hands & Feet: Song for Suzie
Heidi Mortenson // Dele Af Kroppen
Deep End (1970)
The best Lana…
oM at Koko (again)
Requiem
Come to this. It willl be so made of win.
Perfect to fill the gap between Here We Go Magic Monday and St Vincent Wednesday. What a joy. I think everyone in London should come to this. It’ll be fun. Alessi’s Ark are brilliant live. If you haven’t seen her yet then you need to come. If you have seen her before, you still need to come.
Extra warm birthday wishes to Alessi today. Hurray!
Oh!
See!!! See how amazing she is! Listen to that song! Whenever I type about Scary Mansion everything must end in an exclamation!
Really, though. Leah is so talented. Amazing amazing amazing.
Shhhhhh. Do you hear that? It’s the sound of me heart melting into a thousand pieces. How is it that a song can have so much power?
YOU SEE I’M LOST WITHOUT YOUR RHYTHMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM! Ahhh. My goodness. Is this my favourite live song ever? Yes, yes it is. My heart loves it. That steel drum part (that isn’t on the album version) absolutely kills me.
So much passion! I love this.
I popped along to Pure Groove to see Nouvelle Vague, despite never properly listening to them. What a wise decision I made. All I knew is they’re French and they’ve played at The Forum. I was chatting with friends before the band played and they said they do alot of covers and that I’d recognize songs as they’ve been in adverts.
Pure Groove was pretty busy and I was quite intrigued. The band have a date at the Roundhouse later this year, so I knew it was pretty special to see them in such a tiny venue. For non-London folk, you should know that London is HOT right now. So all these people crammed into tiny little Pure Groove made for quite a HOT show. The band played a full set of 10 songs, opening with Killing Moon.
There were two singers, a guitarist and a keyboardist. The singers were both very charismatic, dancing about and singing passionately. The keyboard guy was fun too, shaking his hips around and getting the audience to clap. Pure Groove’s audiences can be pretty dead sometimes, but this crowd was brilliant! Dancing along and clapping, there was a sweet atmosphere. For the final song both singers left the stage to dance in the audience. I know that if the crowd had been more reserved then it could have been quite awkward, but it wasn’t like that at all. There seemed to be quite a few big Nouvelle Vague fans about who sang along. After their set they got a huge cheer and applause, and deservedly so. I loved them and I would be more than happy to catch them again some time. Fantastic, I love when you go to shows not knowing what to expect and then come away thinking ‘wow’. Wow, indeed.
Nouvelle Vague are playing a free instore at Pure Groove tonight. I’ve never listened to them but I will check it out. I seem to remember they played The Forum last year, which is a pretty huge venue.
I love the Avett Brothers. They are amazing. I can’t wait for their new record, I sometimes forget that it’s coming. Emotionalism was one of my favourites from 2007. I listened recently and remembered how absolutely much I adore this song. It’s beautiful, so sweet. The crowd are up for a sing a long, which is brilliant to see. The ‘girrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrl that I adore‘ part is my favourite. Love. Love. Love. Swoon. Gush. Ahh!
I love this band and I can’t wait to see them live, and hopefully that will be soon.
Awwwh. This is swoon inducing. Alessi dedicated this song to me. And the Action Aid people filmed it. So, at the start of the video when Alessi says ‘this song is for Anika’ picture me on the left hand side swooning. In fact, picture me like that whenever you think of me. Everything is so wonderful. I am always swooning when I’m seeing my favourites. Except when I’m hungry, then I am not happy. But, now I have a job, I am no longer in a perpetual state of hunger anymore. YAY. And also, if you ever wondered how to say my name, Alessi says it right. She’s a winner. The ICA looks smaller from above.
Actually, I’m hungry now. I want an ice cream.
H-E-L-P, help me, help me. Oh, my. This song is so brilliant. Everything is perfect. Annie’s voice is superb. The guitar is rockin’. The horns are tasty. I’d love to see Annie with a big band like this.
Check out Actor. One of my favourite records from 2009.
So. Everyone says Low Anthem are amazing live, so I thought they would be more than worth catching at Rough Trade on Thursday night. Because of all the buzz I was expecting the place to be packed out, but it was very quiet. Shame on you, London.
Because nobody was around for wristband collection (and because Rough Trade had run out of wristbands so weren’t giving them out anyway) we headed to, my favourite, NANDOS! I am only two stamps away from a whole free chicken. If anyone wants to come with me on that momentous day, let me know, because I doubt I can eat a whole chicken.
Moving on from that chicken-centric tangent, Low Anthem took to the stage at just past seven. They are a three piece. While they were setting up I was enjoying the look of the instruments. The whole band did some instrument switching throughout their set, which was impressive to watch. All three members are clearly very talented. Jocie had a very cool instrument which made atmospheric noises, I’m not sure what it’s called. It was like a glockenspiel shape, but with metal discs, and to make the sound she ran a bow along them. It was lovely. Singer Ben was able to switch his voice from a gentle, soothing, lullaby-esque whisper to a howl. It was instrumentally gorgeous and the song This God Damn House was particularly beautiful. It featured a whistling part, in which Ben whistled into two phones. Unfortuately it didn’t really work, the phones wouldn’t call each other (no signal in Rough Trade, I know) but it was impressive whistling nonetheless.
I’d love to see the band again. They more than deserve all of the positive word of mouth, worth catching for sure. Here is their Myspace and here is a video of This God Damn House in which the phone whistling actually works.
