Album Review - Screaming Is Something, The Travelling Band

Written for and published on Amelia's Magazine.

The brand new album from The Travelling Band features all the trademarks of a good folk pop album, including introspective lyrics, fantastic harmonies and, as no self-respecting nu-folk band would be without, banjos a-plenty. With their sound deeply rooted in rock, folk and country The Travelling Band’s second offering Screaming Is Something will please the ears of acoustic music lovers everywhere.

Illustration by Natasha Thompson, you can see her blog, here.

The Travelling Band hail from Manchester, so the group are joining the ranks of some pretty impressive acts including Oasis, Elbow and Doves – although they much more closely resemble the latter two of that particular group. The first single from the record, Fairweather Friends could well have been inspired by their fellow Mancunians, the layering of instruments, shimmering guitars and affecting harmonies create a ‘big’ sound a la Elbow, perhaps even X&Y era Coldplay.

You’re reminded of their heritage every now and then too, when a Manc accent sneaks in, such as on Horizon Me And You. This is a fantastic folk pop song and shows real promise in their ability to create a catchy tune and yet make it their own.

It’s Sundial that claims the prize for best track on the album though, and it’s a real highlight – anthemic but all the while remaining sweet, “If I had a home to call my own/ then I wouldn’t need a sun dial/ to stop me roaming around” – it’s calling out for a sunny afternoon at a music festival one day this summer, and it stayed on repeat for a long while before my housemates and neighbours tired of it. Just give it a listen and see how long you can go without humming the chorus.

Indeed the band are no strangers to music festivals and actually got their break by winning the Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition in 2008 where they then performed – I for one, am sorry to have missed them. A homemade video shows the boys hanging out, enjoying the sunshine, and performing Horizon Me and You at The Park at Glastonbury last year (above). And what an idyllic scene, boys performing their pretty music in the pretty countryside, makes you proud to be British.

Tracks Under the Pavement and Hindsight are perhaps a bit confused – the folksier sound definitely suits this band more than rocking out to guitars, but perhaps live this would actually work better. All-in-all this album passes in a hazy stream of sunny guitars and lilting harmonies, the slower songs are perhaps slightly less successful than the more upbeat tunes, which is where the band appear to really flourish, but if you’re looking for a soundtrack to kick off your summer then The Travelling Band’s new album Screaming Is Something could very well be the record you’re looking for.

Illustration by Melissa Dow, you can see her website, here.

The album is released on the 30th May 2011 on Cooking Vinyl. The band kicked off a UK wide tour this summer with a gig last night at The Nest in London. Details of further dates can be found here.

Album Review - In Love With Oblivion, Crystal Stilts

Written for and published on the ever so amazing Amelia's Magazine.

The new album from Brooklyn based Crystal Stilts is out now on Fortuna POP! The Joy Division comparisons are impossible to shake off, but we're still impressed by this second outing.

I was hoping to be able to stay away from the Joy Division comparisons while writing this review of New York band Crystal Stilt’s new album In Love With Oblivion, but like many before me I’ve found it basically impossible – the influence of Ian Curtis flows through the band’s second album like a vein of precious metal. It’s singer Brad Hargett’s drone-like vocal that does it, strongly recalling Curtis as well as the similarly enigmatic Jim Reid of The Jesus and Mary Chain. (And now I won’t mention the J D words ever again…promise.)

In fact quite a lot has been written about Hargett’s singing style, sometimes scathingly, and his vocals are a little monotonous. There are points on this record when I really wanted him to surprise me by stepping out of the echo chamber to give some these songs a bit of extra punch. On Silver Sun for instance, the whole band are doing some pretty great stuff – the guitars and the organs and the jangle of the tambourine but Hargett maintains his monotonal drawl. There are few upbeat tracks on this record and if Hargett switched his style up a bit on some of them, it would lift the whole album.

But perhaps I’m missing the point, this appears to be an album that is more concerned with creating atmospheres or feelings than totally nailing each individual track. Hargett’s obvious attachment to the echo effect and the whole lo-fi approach towards recording and production makes this album sound dreamlike, almost as if you could be listening to it underwater, and to over-produce or clean up the sound would mean losing some of this otherworldly charm.

There’s also a kind of filmic side to the album, thanks to the murky sound and doom-laden lyrics, not forgetting the use of sound effects. Songs open and end with gusts of wind, car crashes, and crickets – it’s totally atmospheric and a big hint that Crystal Stilts aren’t your average Brooklyn-based hipster garage band.

Illustration by Stephanie Thieullent, see more of her amazing work on her blog, here.

The band clearly includes some skilful musicians, the Johnny Cash-inspired guitar licks of opening track Sycamore Tree provides as good an introduction as any – this is a track that sounds like it’s been around for the last 50 years. In fact there are clear 1960s influences throughout and pretty convincing in places, like the band went to sleep in 1964 and woke up in 2011 and continued making music like nothing had changed, which for someone like me, who happens to love the music of the 1960s, makes this album a really interesting prospect.

There are peaks and troughs with this record though, the seven minute Alien Rivers is a needless addition but those that follow like stand-out track Flying Into the Sun is a fantastic listen and includes the inspired lyrics “There’s a black hole/ behind these eyes/ takes everything with it/ when it dies.” Like the album title suggests there is a bit of an emo vibe running through much of Hargett’s songwriting.

This is the kind of album then, that may well find itself providing the soundtrack to a whole host of late night gatherings and post-party hangouts, and I suspect could sound even better when you’re burnt out but not ready to go to bed just yet.

Crystal Stilts are playing in XOYO in London on June 21 – their only UK date and by the sounds of it, well worth getting down to.

Exhibition Review - The Museum of Everything

Illustration by Emmeline Pidgen

Published on the ever so amazing Amelia's Magazine.

It’s back but not for long. The Museum of Everything has once again put on one of the most intriguing and eccentric exhibitions in all of London and one not to be missed.

Returning for the third time the Museum of Everything’s simply named Exhibition #3 has been put together with the help of British pop artist Sir Peter Blake. It only opened on the 13^th October to coincide with the Frieze art fair and is due to close again at Christmas so get down there quick before it’s gone, I promise you’d be sorry to miss it.

A strange little place, the Museum of Everything can be found tucked away down a back street in Primose Hill next to the local library. However, although small in stature this curious museum will still require a good portion of your morning or afternoon to get round because every little space, spot, and shelf is covered with intriguing things to peer at.

Entering through the colourful striped doorway and paying a voluntary donation to a lady in a small kitsch ticket booth and you may be well on your way to guessing that the circus is the theme this time round. Indeed circus mirrors greet you, transforming you into a giant, a dwarf and…God forbid! someone wider than they are tall! Apt then that round the corner is the ‘gallery of unusual people’ and the beginning of an interesting peek into the world of the carnival and the freak show. The gallery is a selection of historic sideshow memorabilia depicting everyone from bearded ladies and dwarves to a man with the completely smooth appearance (yes! including ‘downstairs’) and webbed feet of a frog. This vast collection of posters and postcards are a “celebration of difference” because “nobody’s perfect”, or at least that’s the idea as Sir Peter Blake himself explains in a video later on.

By Emmeline Pidgen

Giant banners advertising, among other things, “strange little people”, and “the world’s most grotesque creature” are strewn all over the walls in the main hall. Painted by the so-called ‘king of the sideshow banner’, Fred Johnson, his is just one among the many all but defunct crafts that are revered at the Museum of Everything. There’s even a wardrobe door emblazoned with a leopard painted by sign painter Joe Ephgrave, who also painted the iconic drum skin on the award-winning cover of the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album that Sir Peter Blake designed.

In fact that’s the really lovely thing about the Museum of Everything, iconic artworks are mixed in without fanfare among work from less known, brilliant, and usually eccentric artists’ - like the embroidery of Ted Willcox. Ted was taught to sew in hospital while recovering from injuries incurred in WW2. He then went on to spend the rest of his life indoors finding inspiration in everything from Alice in Wonderland to pictures of reclining bare-chested beauties, recreating them all in needle and thread.

By Natasha Thompson

In many ways the Museum can be viewed as a potted history of Great Britain, though told from a thoroughly left field point of view. Nothing sums this up better than the Walter Potter section, an example of Victoriana at its most bizarre if ever there was one. Cleary no relation to animal lover Beatrix, Walter Potter’s tableaux are made up of stuffed rabbits, a variety of birds, squirrels, rats, frogs, puppies and kittens - all in a surprising range of poses. They are completely grotesque but also fascinating, and of course, today taxidermy is very much back in vogue with artists like Polly Morgan picking up and popularising the ancient craft once again.

The Museum of Everything managed to impart on me the same kinds of feelings that I imagine may have flashed through the minds of the archaic freak show audience. A mix of morbid curiosity, delight in viewing the strange, and a childish excitement over being reminded what a beautiful and odd world we live in. Catch it while the circus is still in town!

Open Wednesday – Sunday, 10.30 am – 6.30 pm until Christmas

The People’s Supermarket: a new approach to food shopping

Do you dream of an antidote to Tescos? Don't we all?! Well, a group of gourmets have done more than just dream, they've set up the ultimate food coop in Holborn.

A new era in food shopping could have dawned a few weeks ago as The People’s Supermarket in Holborn opened its doors for the very first time.

It’s ultimate aim? To bring an end to the big supermarket chains one potato at a time of course! At least that’s what team ‘People’s Supermarket’ believe; chef, Arthur Potts Dawson — already known for his Acorn House restaurant in King’s Cross and London’s first eco-restaurant, the Waterhouse Restaurant in Hackney; retail consultant, Kate Wickes-Bull; and self proclaimed social entrepreneur, David Barrie.

So what’s so special about The People’s Supermarket (TPS)? Well, modeled largely on the Park Slope Food Coop in Brooklyn, established in 1974, it will work as a totally nonprofit venture. Run fully by teams of volunteers, all profits will be invested back into stocking the shop with great food at minimal prices and TPS hopes to help families and low income groups in the community along the way by providing work experience, training, and low cost shopping. A sign outside listed the number of members as 124 on my trip but I can imagine this will soon start to rise, and anyway Potts Dawson reckons they need at least 300 members for the shop to actually become a sustainable business. Anyone can shop at TPS but the team hopes that as customers visit this unique project and see the quality of produce and with the added incentive of getting great discounts they might become a member — pledging to work at the shop for a few hours every month and paying a £25 annual membership fee. The website promises, in Marxist-like terms, a supermarket that is “run by the people for the people, selling the best food at the lowest possible prices.”

Located on Lambs Conduit Street near Russell Square tube, TPS doesn’t stand out as exactly being a glamorous shop, nor has it in anyway been made to look trendy as I was half-expecting — seeing that this is the natural habitat of posh delis, coffee shops and boutiques. Instead TPS doesn’t appear to look much different to the private local supermarket that went before it, and originally belonged to the enemy — Tesco. Now the place has been spruced up by an army of helpers — all volunteers of course, but the main decoration is the addition of posters to the walls – which, although sadly lacking images of Lord Kitchener, famous for appearing in YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU posters – appeal to customer’s philanthropic side, stating in block capitals, “The people’s supermarket needs you, join today”. All this does go to show, however, that TPS is serious about saving money. Instead of investing in funky counters and arty light fittings, TPS has clearly poured all available funds back into stocking the shop with the best produce.

The fruit and vegetables, which are laid out on old second-hand tables like in a market or old-fashioned green grocers, are sourced from some of the best farmer’s markets around. There are also selections of handmade breads and cakes as well as most of the usual foodstuffs you would expect to find in a small local supermarket. But if it turns out that there is something that isn’t available customers can simply scribble a note of it up on the blackboard for the managers to see — grapefruit juice, curry powder, lentils and ghee were among the omissions when I visited on Saturday 5 June.

Todd was store manager when I made a trip to TPS on Saturday. Delighted at how quickly word of the store was spreading Todd said they had been really busy since the shop opened on Tuesday 1 June, so he was quick to make an appeal for more staff — then he could have a decent lunch break, he told me jokingly. Todd was also happy about TPS’s reception in the local area too, saying that he really felt the whole community was getting behind the project.

Which is good because the setup will make the greatest difference to those who live or work near the shop who will be able to use it fairly often and make the most of the discounts, after paying the £25 membership fee of course. There might be another reason why people will volunteer to work for free at TPS though — an added bonus for some maybe? The running of the shop is to become the subject of a new prime time Channel 4 documentary, which I’m sure will put a shine on the prospect of volunteering for any self-promoting types out there. There are also plans for a cookbook, packed full of recipes for dishes made with ingredients from the shop. I guess lentil curry is out for the time being then!

Perhaps the best thing about TPS though, is the whole ‘niceness’ of it all. There has been a wealth of comments on the twittersphere about the enthusiastic staff, the smiling customers, and the general buzz in the air that something new and exciting is happening. Certainly while at university I used to pop along to a small fruit and veg cooperative each week and I remember the more grass roots approach to buying and selling food being an enjoyable experience. And it seems the tweeters were right — the same pleasant atmosphere is already in full swing in Holborn. Katie, a student from the nearby University College London, spotted me taking some pictures outside, “It’s great isn’t it?” she said, “I think it’s the atmosphere which is nicest, I came in on opening day and people were chatting to each other. Chatting to complete strangers — I mean that doesn’t happen in London very often does it?”

Chatting to strangers, volunteering in a supermarket and reaping the benefits and all while being filmed for Channel 4 — I don’t think that happens anywhere very often.

Published over at the divine Amelia's Magazine, here.