SXSW (said South by Southwest) is a yearly Texan industry music festival. This year, a host of UK folksters took the festival by storm with music journos from across the pond giving rave reviews to Mumford and Sons in particular. FFS’s Matt Hardy takes us through his SXSW experience.
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Album review: Iain Archer – To The Pine Roots
Iain Archer is not hugely known by name, but his material has graced thousands of indie kids’ ears thanks to his former life as a member of Snow Patrol. His main role was as a lyricist with mate and cohort Gary Lightbody and although his own vocals are sweet, airy and soft, the similarities pretty much end there.
Sons of Noel and Adrian
The Brighton-based Sons are one of Wilkommen Records’ many awesome folk acts, alongside The Leisure Society, The Miserable Rich and Shoreline
Single review: Odd Situation – Semifinalists
The caveat that I should insert here is that this is very much not folk. Still, we’re all open-minded here, and really I’ve always had rather a soft spot for Semifinalists.
Album Review: Alessi’s Ark – Notes from the Treehouse
Paul Malloy, FFS’s resident cantankerous sod, has his heart melted by Alessi’s Ark and does his best to deny it…
The Balky Mule, Jane Bartholomew, My Two Toms @ The Sanctuary Café, Brighton
The Balky Mule has flown all the way from his new home in Australia to be with us tonight in the intimate basement confines of the Sanctuary Café. The former member of post-rock folk pastoralists Flying Saucer Attack, as well as other Bristol-scene favourites Movietone and Crescent, has a new album out on Brighton-based record label Fat Cat. Having sent his solo-recorded effort half way round the world to be released, he’s now followed it to the UK to reveal just what he’s like live – as no-one really knows.
Blue Roses
Bradford’s Laura Groves has renamed herself under the moniker of the rarest of flowers. Possessing a haunting voice and flawless musicianship, she’s no shrinking violet, describing her music as “textured, emotive, eclectic, personal, delicate.”
King Creosote
King Creosote is Kenny Anderson, a lo-fi folk singer-songwriter from north-east Fife, Scotland, who began releasing solo tracks on Fence Records, the label he formed in 1995. We Say: The brilliant single Coast on By is a particularly likeable song…
Single: Mumford and Sons – The Cave and the Open Sea
Finger picking into existence like a well-crafted paragraph with a lolling acoustic guitar riff sculpted rather than played, Mumford & Sons’ “The Cave and the Open Sea” immediately announces itself as something to be savoured.
Live: Patti Plinko and her Boy @ Leicester Square Theatre
A portable record player sits atop a piano under a solitary spotlight, and from it emerges a dark and unholy voice, oom-pah-pahing whilst ‘the boy’, attired in boiler suit and gas mask, lurks in the shadows. Patti Plinko wouldn’t be out of place in an air raid shelter circa 1941, and the boy would be out of place anywhere. Together they put on a show that keeps the temporary inhabitants of this particular underground bunker in Leicester Square enthralled for the better part of an hour.