Clouds was Joni Mitchell’s second album and won her a Grammy for best folk performance in 1970. I didn’t know the album’s biography before I came to write this piece because when you come to an artist with a large…
Laura Marling, Beth Orton and Thea Gilmore to play Hay Festival
We all know books are sexy, in which case the annual Hay Festival is likely to get you rather hot under the collar, with the likes of Bill Bryson, Zadie Smith and Tom Stoppard (plus many, many more) gracing the programme. But if you prefer to get…
Live: Po’Girl @ Holywell Music Hall, Oxford
Po’Girl stem from Canada and comprise Allison Russell, Awna Teixeira, and Benny Sidelinger. Allison and Awna both have incredible voices and produce incredible harmonies, yet as multiple instrumentalists they bring to their showcases a wide array of instruments that include…
Live: The Antlers @ The Scala, London
Kings Cross is an area lacking identity over and above being a major travel hub. The immediate vicinity is a tableau of inner city post-industrial decline and recent attempts at regeneration which have, in the main, failed. The venue for…
Album: William Fitzsimmons – Derivatives
William Fitzsimmons, the son of two blind musicians from Pittsburgh, announced his arrival last year with his official debut The Sparrow And The Crow. Filled with the sort of gentle folk-rock that quickly racked him up a series of US…
Kirsty McGee on Joni Mitchell
It had been a hard and gratifying spring. I was all lean muscle and mudstains after months of climbing trees at the Manchester airport protest camp and feeling good from all the fresh air, living in benders, hitching, cooking outdoors…