Elizabeth and the Catapult play in Philly for the first time.

(At the Tin Angel on the 27th June)
Such a fantastic show!. In the pic with Jeff Taylor, he sang a few songs with them (these two, some chemistry).

Setlist:

They said that it was the first time they weren't playing with a bassist in years, but that they were really loving the sound...couldn't play "Taller children" because of that though (somebody requested it). I don't really like that song much so...a very different matter was their not playing "Rainiest day..." ...was in the setlist but they forgot. Hmm.

They played a few new songs, have uploaded a bit of "Hypochondriac" I recorded since I can't find it anywhere else and it's really wow. Can't quite understand half the lyrics (anybody help?). Also uploaded the cover of M. Ward's "Fuel for fire" they did with Taylor. This last one sounded much better live. Really nice people, Elizabeth's voice is effortlessly impressive and Pete Woodman on guitar is pretty amazing. But the three of them really show that they've been playing together time enough to do so almost as one and that they're such talented people. After the show they stayed around to chat with everybody.

Opening act was Christina Courtin, whose first songs were pretty haunting.

Finished the post!. Since when I was almost packed to leave it's all been postponed a few more weeks...big mess but have a bit more of time. Pretty nerve wrecking, these last days before moving somewhere else.

Lloyd Cole at the Tin Angel - Nov'08

I've just realized I didn't do a post on this one (really thought I had until I went and tried to look for it!. Then realized at that time I didn't want to post for a particular reason), can't be. Even if it's a short one, I'll sneak it now somewhere.

I started listening to him ages ago, and by then he already had a long career behind him, with an impressive amount of songs. He now lives in the US and is a very meticulous and quiet middle aged man in black, incredibly serious about his playing. .

..ever seen a setlist like this one?

For someone who has not seen any image of him since his 80-90's grey eyed heartthrob aloof aired days, it's a change. He's still very much his very English self though, (his humour too!, made us laugh a lot) and a fantastic musician. And his voice has hardly changed.
He played solo and after the show he was very accessible (though his particular distant) so I was able to talk to him and ask him about "There for her", one of my all time favourite songs. He told me he also thought it was one of the best songs he's ever composed but that it was difficult to play it solo, hence his not playing it... bummer. I heard half of that song on a "independent" radio station one night ages ago, managed to record like 20 seconds of it (on tape, was that looong ago), loved it but didn't have the title, and no google then to do a search by lyrics. And few people listened to him in my country, certainly no one around me. I recognized his voice (I was quite taken with everything British then, would spend my allowance on imported Smash Hits and listen to the BBC Top 40 on the AM radio, lots of static, the sshhhs ended up being too much for me!) but that was all my info. A while after I went to the only record shop in my area that had his music and out of the Lloyd Cole cd's they had I tried to guess which had a title in it that could be my mystery song. I bet on "Love story" and my father bought it to me... it wasn't in it. Much later I remembered and googled it, finally found it, finally listened to it in full. When you have that story with a song, it's serious :)

Just lately heard Camera Obscura' explain that their song "Lloyd, I'm ready to be heartbroken" (fantastic song) is a reference to him and his famous Are you .... Apparently they sent it to him first thing and turns out his son is a Camera Obscura fan!

And it's a fact we take for granted that these days of Internet magic are so fantastic for music lovers...it was so much harder before. I've been using IMEEM quite a bit lately, pretty fast and has this ton of music, lots of different versions of songs and curious things. It's visually ugly and as far as radio /stats go lastfm is way better. But it has so much more music available. I recently read that this kind of sites (the article specifically mentioned Spotify as an example, which is not available here so I have no clue,but seems to be very popular in Europe), have reduced illegal music traffic by half. Still I doubt copyright owners are happy about it!

Anyway, I owe Lloyd for so many great songs (I'm still discovering some of them, today I listened to "Margo's waltz for the first time -shame on me-, so good, so dispassionately passionate, he was always one of the wisest). I also owe him for quite a lot of improvement of my English, after so many hours fighting to understand his lyrics, my Collins beside me...

I uploaded a few vids of his performance on my youtube channel.

Lisa Hannigan at the Artist Den

This show as recorded on the 17th June in Montclair, NJ (the city of the million traffic lights, all strictly unsynchronized for further enjoyment...can be pretty nerve wrecking when you're running late...)

Post in progress, will write it later but I wanted to post pics (they said no flash photography, took some non-flash as always). Concert was great.

Setlist:

Been to 4 concerts these last 3 days so hope to post on one or two at least. These days are coming to an end for me so I'm trying to make the most of it!
PS May'11: You can now watch a preview of the episode on MSN here (depending on your location), or you can like the Artist Den on facebook and you'll have access to a preview (try here in case it works without the like step). Can't believe the time it's taken to finally be able to watch it!

Labels: "The artist Den lisa hannigan"

Sad day for my country today.

There's some really brave people out there, there's also the viciously coward and mean. Sometimes these seem to win.

The white rabbits - It IS frightening!

In the same line as the Annuals' two drummers, the White rabbits actually go and beat them by at some points making it three drummers. Saw it at their World Cafe show back in May 15th (ahemm, slight delay in posting), one of the guitars would also have a go at it (cymbals mostly). Still Jamie Levinson and Matthew Clark are the two official drummers, and seeing them play live is pretty impressive, speed and energy-wise, wow. Also operationally-wise: Clark (rotating the most) would alternatively play guitar or keyboards in other songs, and he was not the only one switching instruments/places...

Also check out Clark's palest blue eyes if you can. If you do you'll see I'm not being frivolous by mentioning them!. I had not paid attention until I asked him one of my usual dumb questions (he was most nice though!)

Listen to the whole set here (XPN Archives)

And this little guy I met this weekend reminded me I had to do this post!:

Camera Obscura's "Honey in the sun" video +Keane dj

Camera Obscura' s just posted their latest video on Spinner here. Last track on their album, "Honey in the Sun" (5min 45s long!) is nevertheless my favourite one off "My maudlin career". The video isn't anything new but the photography in it is pretty beautiful and almost any still off it would make a fantastic pic.

Anybody familiar with this band knows how much better it will make you feel about acting like an utter dork in love matters. With poignant self explanatory lines as "The trouble is I got myself close to hating me, when I wake up in the morning it's your face I see" they'll still manage to uplift you to "happy as a clam" state. A public service!.

Still, dork / dorkette or not, half the tracks on their latest cd are completely fantastic. And they're currently on tour (U.S.)!

Lately my posts have been most erratic, seems I only get to post the short ones. If anybody follows this blog (I doubt it, but I have a few subscribers, thanks to them whoever they are!), just a note that I'm temporarily busy, unmotivated, and a bit overwhelmed by big changes so "solid" blogging's been relegated somehow. :)

Proof of that is the nonexistance of posts on all my Keane adventures last May!. Tonight Y-Rock on XPN will broadcast the songs each of them chose to dj when they visited the radio back then. I'm still sort of surprised that on such a short list one of Tim's was BFL's "Daniel". Kudos to Natasha.

If you can't listen to it today, not to worry, Y-Rock usually posts the takeovers some time later as free podcasts available for listening here.

Nicest guys.

Labels: "Keane takeover", "Keane XPN", "honey in the sun video"

Only today cheaper tix at Livenation!

A heads up on LiveNation's 24 h. promotion: only today tix won't be charged the service fee. So if you're planning on buying a ticket, today's the day.
For instance:
*Tori Amos at the Tower Aug 15th
*Cat Power, The pretenders and Juliette Lewis at the Tower on Aug. 13th
And since I'm not a Livenation fan (and I have nothing to do with them) , there's many other concerts as worth checking out coming soon:
*Elizabeth and the Catapult at the Tin Angel (jun'09)
*Melody Gardot at the WCL (jun'09)
*Hayes Carll at the Tin Angel (jun'09)
*The Wallflowers at the Keswick (jul'09)
*Camera Obscura at the TLA (jun'09). Last but definitely not least.
I'll think of more and post them.

Baked oatmeal

I had to send this recipe to somebody (or else she may stop talking to me!), so I might as well share it, make this blog even more surreal...

It's delicious (I'd go quite easier on the sugar though).

We stayed at a lovely B&B in Lancaster County not long ago and Carol, the owner, would cook this for breakfast. She's so used to being asked for the recipe she had this photocopy ready.
I still haven't tried to do it though. The thrill of cooking disappeared for me the moment that cooking became one more daily chore...

Another post sneaked between older stuff....

The unfindable "S" (almost!)

So I was bored bored bored today with boring things to do, and after doing other silly stuff I went and wasted more time in front of my computer (how original). And typed "I'm bored" in lastfm's music search, see what inspiring ideas would come up. Haaa, that's when my boredom disappeared because "S" and her song "I'm so bored I'm going to sleep" showed up and triggered my curiosity. Since it sounded quite suitable I tried to listen to it... not available there so after a few searches (ok, this post is boring, it has to be...) I came up with a myspace for her but she wasn't in charge of it. So next step? Googling "S" didn't seem like a brilliant idea somehow ... well, at some point ended up finding her myspace here. But the page's so sparse, hardly any friends... Oh, and her latest track is called "??????" (- really good, not available for download though).

Well, I really like her music and it's different and curious, and finding it seems like one of those searches for the treasure with clues and a prize at the end. Guess she didn't make it to the "promote yourself" classes..or maybe she just prefers it this way...

PS There's actually more than one act with the name "S", the one I'm referring to is Jenn Ghetto (ex- Carissa's Wierd), she actually had great reviews of her record "Puking and crying" (don't let the title scare you away) a while ago, but seems it's still pretty off radar (can think of a few reasons...)

Well, people are not usually curious, though as Colin Farrell said in some award show (I couldn't stand the guy until he said this sentence) "curiosity is love". Couldn't agree more.As always I kind of drifted..off...topic... Check out her music though.

Regina's new song - Eet (lyrics)

Woke up this morning to find this new little jewel by Regina Spektor. A somehow different sound for her in that chorus with the piano and the big drums (can't help it, that part reminds me of Keane's "Everybody's changing" but with its own identity). Coolest end. Lyrics here (songmeanings), also people's thoughts on the song's meaning.
Eet



Get this video and more at MySpace.com She's been posting new songs in her myspace for a few weeks now, her album Far out in a few weeks-.
And last time I'm embedding a myspace vid, quite the nuissance.
TAgs: eet lyrics, regina spektor eet, regina spektor eet lyrics