What we’re listening to – Glastonbury

Foals at Glastonbury

Well this week’s been a shitter, hasn’t it? We don’t believe in broadcasting the political debate here at Shambles HQ but rest assured that we’re a little disappointed at the outcome of the Referendum, even though our European Activities will continue at full pace.

It’s also been absolutely PISSING IT DOWN in London and the rest of the country: par for the course, naturally, and also a hallmark of hippy-Mecca happy-time music-party mud-slog Glastonbury Festival, which just finished this weekend. If you’re sane, like us, you went nowhere near a festival site that boasts hits such as “The Ditch of Death”, “Mabel’s Racist Cow Retirement Home” and “Oh God It’s a Room Full of Middle Class Children”, but still wanted to enjoy some of the music on offer.

Luckily, we’re here to help at Podshambles. Because that’s what we’re here for. Making podcasts and writing a bit about bands we like.

RUNNING DOWN FROM MOST TO LEAST LIKELY TO APPEAR ON THE QUEEN’S “TOP CHOONZ” COMPILATION:

Dancing Years 

Pick number one is Dancing Years, a five-piece from Leeds that sound a bit like what would happen if Damien Rice, Sigur Rós and the Divine Comedy met for a few beers at their local before getting a bit sad and writing some songs around the knackered pub piano. Their set is sadly unavailable to watch in full but Neon Lights – on YouTube below – is a booze-fuelled and plaintive lover’s lament thanks to swallowed vocals from Dave Henshaw. The band’s other output ranges from not-so-laddy singalongs (Here’s To My Old Friends a particular treat) to angrier, more textured numbers that borrow from the aforementioned Icelanders. At present they’re touring a few venues up North but keep an eye on these cheeky Yorkshire chappies for other dates soon – they’re well worth skipping along to see.

Kamasi Washington

Man, Kamasi Washington. If you’re a jazzy hip-hop head you may already know of the Los Angeles funker, who’s played in the past alongside household names like Herbie Hancock,  Lauryn Hill, Nas, Snoop Dogg, Flying Lotus, Thundercat – the list goes on. He was also a formative influence and saxy presence in the studio for Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly, widely regarded as one of the finest hip-hop albums produced in the last decade. On his own, Kamasi leads his own little band that put out some seriously fraught jams – the best jams there are – in huge, sweeping compositions that often last some 20 minutes. Check his whole set from the West Holts Stage right here, especially the shifting, pulsing highlight The Rhythm Changes.

Låpsley

AKA Holly Lapsley Fletcher, Låpsley is not some fey Scandinavian songstress but a young singer from Southport via Scotland who makes soft and spacey songs (where there enough susurruses in that sentence?) Her restrained keys, vocal manipulation and ear for a heart-swelling chorus are all hallmarks of a sound that sits somewhere between SOHN, Santigold and Jamie Woon, but is of course so much more than the sum of Låpsley’s inspirations. She played a few times over the weekend but her stripped down appearance on the BBC Introducing stage is well worth indulging in: check out Station below.

Sigur Rós

I’m pretty sure these Icelandic lads can do anything – they can make the most enchanting elf-music that it is possible to imagine, they put on a wicked light show and they even have appeared in Game of Thrones at what is officially the most satisfyingly macabre wedding EVER – but seeing them on this most recent tour, live and in the flesh, is something special. Though they had shed keyboards player Kjartan Sveinsson and, with him, a lot of the melodic, delicate twinkly bits some fans may love them for, Sigur Rós have re-cast themselves as a trio of mad, loud, angry thunderbastards, making a cacophony on stage that sounds like three ancient whales beaching themselves in an industrial dystopia. Or something near that effect.

Foals

I dunno if you’ve ever heard of these small-time dweebs from Oxfordshire – let alone the one that’s related to award-winning comedian and podcast Paddy “Fights with Emus” Gervers – but Foals picked up Glastonbury festival firmly by the lapels, blew some whiskey-spiked breath in its face and then walloped it around the face for the duration of their mega-set on the Pyramid Stage. You can watch highlights from their barnstorming, trouser-ripping set right here, but really you should go an experience them live. Paddy and Laurie did and barely recovered, their ears blown inside out, their trousers removed and butts firmly rocked by the power of Wally’s bass playing ALONE. Tracks from the fivesome’s latest LP What Went Down really belong on the big stage, the intricate math-rock of early Foals giving way to the snorting, sweaty, black stallion that they’ve now become. Phwoar.

Yannis from Foals

BONUS: Secret list of bands you should boycott at all costs:

The Last Shadow Puppets. Because Alex Turner doesn’t need any more excuses to keep dressing Miles Kane up as himself, Alex Turner.

Bastille. Just dreadful. All the poise of a pissed goose and none of the class.

Tom Odell. YOU’RE NOT KIDDING ANYONE, TOM. YOU ARE GOING TO BE REMEMBERED FOR YOUR CONTRIBUTION TO ADVERT SOUNDTRACKS, TOM. O DEAR, OH DELL.

Wolf Alice. You’ll ask “WHY?” repeatedly during their set, eg: Why is the lead singer suddenly doing screamo? Why does the lead guitarist look like he dipped his hair in tippex? Why are we watching?

Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats. Nothing wrong with them or their music but that is a gross band name.

Shambletracks: Taj Mahal makes it clear that you Ain’t Gwine To Whistle Dixie.

HELLO. I’m here again. I being Paddy. Paddy being Paddy from the Podshambles.

How are you? GREAT, GOOD TO HEAR IT. I am also well – I’ve just finished doing a prerecord for Shoreditch Radio on Ella Woods’ show ‘Ella Plays What’ which has been super awesome. It was a Valentine’s Day special and I even got to choose some songs (for your information I chose Love In The Afternoon by The Martin Harley Band and No Children by The Mountain Goats – both classics). Do give it a listen on Shoreditch Radio this Friday at MIDDAY.

Anywho, I’ve chosen something a little different today. It’s an eight-and-a-half minute instrumental (I know, right?) in the form of Ain’t Gwine To Whistle Dixie by Taj Mahal. Point number one: I have been listening to this song for twenty years, and doing a quick google revealed to me that it isn’t in fact called ‘Ain’t Got To Whistle‘ – the name I have been referring to it by for literally 83.3333% of my life – which is a massive embarrassment. Point number two: it is gorgeous.

I was primarily brought up on blues music. My Dad plays the blues better than anyone I have ever met, and so the dulcet tones of old America used to ring throughout my childhood home every single day – and it was magnificent. My father is one of those guys that can just play music. Hand him an instrument and he will ace it: double-bass, jazz piano, trombone, erhu – you name it. He fucking rules. He’s in his mid-sixties and is still taking music lessons every week to ‘make sure he keeps his eye in’, and regularly plays with his bands ‘Lady & The Gents’, ‘The Coffin Dodgers’ and ‘Trains’. Thus it was only natural that myself and my siblings all learnt music from a very young age, all going on to forge careers in the industry. The one thing we can all agree on it that blues was the instigator – and it was all thanks to Dad.

I’m sure I’ll cover a fair bit of the music he introduced us to in the coming months, but the song that instantly springs to mind is this one. Perhaps it’s because it’s a long piece with no vocals, and therefore provides some kind of backing track to the vast majority of my earliest memories. Maybe it’s just because it is rad. Either way – here it is.

If you haven’t listened to Taj Mahal yet – DO IT NOW. Henry Saint Clair Fredericks (his real name) is a musical mastermind and a bloody hero to boot. Have a dig through his discography and you’ll find he has played with literally everyone under the sun (odds are you have heard him before on one song or another) and quite rightly so. Check out The Best Of Taj Mahal for an idea of his style.

I hope you enjoy the mellow tune from my youth ‘Ain’t Gwine To Whistle Dixie’.

You’re welcome.

Big love,

Paddy XX

Shambletracks: TV On The Radio are always on my TV and my Radio.

So I forgot that Laurie is technically on holiday this weekend and I was meant to do all the Shambletracks. Erm. Woops. But I’m here now so it’s totally fine, and boy oh boy woah check it out wham bam thank you ma’am have I got a treat for you sonny Jimbo. It’s here, it’s now – it’s TV On The Radio.

Ever since I emerged from my bio-egg as a tumbling cub (/happy-go-lucky scamp) I have been filled with a yearning – an insatiable thirst for something to wow me. I frolicked for years, heading from port to port (not sailing, just tumbling) trying to find a seemingly unobtainable high. It never came.

UNTIL ONE DAY.

I was stood outside The Star (a sleepy pub just off Cowley Road in Oxford), having one final pint with my brother Walter before I boarded the bus to move to London. I was scared as I had lived in Oxford my entire life and the prospect of moving to the big smoke was in equal measure tantalising and petrifying. You know when you’re sort of unsure about whatever you are about to do, and as a result you end up making your current task last as long as possible to try and procrastinate your way to not having to face the inevitable? I was doing that. I’d been nursing the Guinness for a good 45 minutes when my brother approached.

“I have something for you, you know, to listen to on the bus.” He grinned and handed me a mix CD, and suddenly everything was fine. You see Walter always accents big moments in my life by making me mix CDs. He gave me one every Christmas as I grew up, every exam period, every birthday, every failed relationship and every major accomplishment. The mixes were always there, helping me on my way, and they were always fucking sensational.

I remember this one so, so clearly. I listened to it all the way to my new flat and I fell in love with every single band on there. It had some storming tracks on it (Sin (Live) by Nine Inch Nails, It Fit When I Was A Kid by Liars, Televators by The Mars Volta, Last Nite Of The Proms by Youthmovies – and many more gamechangers) but one in particular stood out for me: Love Dog by TV On The Radio. It genuinely made me smile, and suddenly everything was going to be okay. Sometimes songs resonate in that very special way – this was one of those times.

Love Dog is a restrained, heartfelt and honest song, with perfect harmonies and haunting strings pulling it all together. It draws inspiration from Persian poet Rūmī’s ‘Love Dogs‘ (the final lines of which read “There are love dogs, no one knows the names of. Give your life to be one of them.”) and manages to become a topic for debate in its true meaning – the main question being is it about falling in love with partner, or is it about finding God. Give it a listen and draw your own conclusions – I truly love this song.

I know this has been a bit of a serious one, but hey I spend so much time dicking about it’s actually quite nice to show a different side of things sometimes. I hope you’ve enjoyed it. Without further ado, I present TV On The Radio‘s ‘Love Dog‘ from the album ‘Dear Science‘.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfUv6r3iVOw

That’s it from me today – I think the Hamburglar/Corporal #coolmoves/Magic Magic Johnson/CrumpetKing1000 (Laurie) will be back tomorrow!

Big love,

Paddy XX