Quick wins from my new career

I spent an interesting day yesterday substituting for my holidaying daughter: she's a sub-editor for PlayGround - a Spanish-based but now bilingual net music magazine. So I spent the day reading and adjusting reviews, interviews and news items about all sorts of performers, including many I hadn't heard of before.

Two discoveries to share with you:

A German band Pretty Lightning who are about to release their first album. I couldn't resist the description of their style 'moving between the psychedelic blues of people like Wooden Shjips or Moon Duo, the freak-folk of Sunburned Hand Of The Man, the primitive sounds of International Harvester and the Kraut-rock of Amon Duul II'. And the audio sample sounds pretty decent - atmospheric, droney and intriguing. I'll be looking out for the album.

Another irresistible bit of copy was a piece about French dance duo Justice, who had apparently managed to draw on 54 primarily rock tracks - including a whole slew of my personal favourites - in compiling a 5 minute minimix. It's really impressive and can be heard here (the PlayGround piece I subbed doesn't seem to be up yet). '21st Century Schizoid Man' and 'Ohio' nicely recognisable, but I could have done with a bit more of Todd Rundgren's 'Izzat Love' at the expense of some of the other 51...

A final bit of serendipity was checking a reference in a PlayGround piece to Shabazz Palaces, learning that they are 'a Seattle-based hiphop collective' and hearing some encouraging sounds from them, and then seeing them in the list of bands who are going to be playing at the Great Escape festival in Brighton in May. I'd been a little underwhelmed by the intial GE line-up announcement (ie I'd barely heard of anyone on it), but the second list includes Beth Jeans Houghton, Jonquil and Alabama Shakes...I know it's the new discoveries that are often the most rewarding, but it's good to have a few fixed points in the programme.

A quick round up

Seven weeks into 2012 and I find I have only written about listening to musicians who'd qualify for a bus pass. Rest assured, my ears are still open to new stuff. Two of this year's releases I'm listening to a lot are:

• Portico Quartet's third album, inventively titled Portico Quartet. It's a really interesting development of their distinctive Hang-heavy sound, less obviously jazzy than before, with more electronics and loops.

• Beth Jeans Houghton & The Hooves Of Destiny's Yours Truly, Cellophane Nose - which is definitely one of those discs you don't want to have to ask for at the counter. Beneath the arch and obviously quirky lurks an inspired writer and performer with a strong sense of melody. I saw her a couple of years ago in Brighton, second on the bill to Stornoway, and thought she definitely had something. The album's been a relatively long time coming, but it feels strong and assured. She's getting a fair amount of publicity now, which I hope will prove positive, centring on her relationship with a Red Hot Chili Pepper...

On the live front, I've seen both young and old: another strong set from Ahab at the Latest Bar (now refusing to play 'Wagon Wheel' because 'it's not one of our songs' - a bit precious, lads. Fair enough if you're fed up and want a change...); Michael Chapman supported by Mark Wynn; and the Coal Porters.

Michael Chapman is a bona fide legend: a glorious guitar stylist with a distinctive voice and song-writing approach, seventy now but going just as strongly as ever. He played at the West Hill Hall in Brighton, which is a bizarre setting: a community hall usually used for toddler groups and Woodcraft Folk meetings - I was one of a bunch of friends who hired it for Millennium Night and, as you'd imagine, contrived to party like it was 1999... until long after it wasn't.

Anyway, it closed a personal circle nicely because I have a poster on my wall advertising Michael's appearance at the 1970 Clitheroe Pop Festival - which is the only one of those events which I didn't attend, so very satisfying to catch up with him just 42 years on. And if you haven't heard of Clitheroe or its festivals have a look at this site here to which I fed some information and pictures.

Mark Wynn, who opened at the West Hill Hall, is from a younger generation of wry Yorkshiremen, setting a dry quasi-talking blues style vocal against rather more original and accomplished guitar parts than that description might lead you to expect. Here's a taste.

The Coal Porters played The Greys and it was a warm and always entertaining evening. I find their recent original songs of varying quality, but they choose some classy covers ('Teenage Kicks', 'Like A Hurricane') and are a reliably strong ensemble, with Carly Frey's fiddle outstanding. Sid Griffin's a hero, of course - just one Long Ryders song this time, should have been more - and I'd always go and see them when they're in town.

Right, that's caught up with 2012.

March will bring Van Morrison at The Dome (fingers crossed, as always, but The Guardian just gave him a 5* review, which is hopeful...) and The Civil Wars at Komedia (fresh from winning two Grammys, so no doubt heading for bigger halls next time round). 

Mr Phigg hits Amazon

The paperback edition of The Night Of The Round Stable is now listed on Amazon in the UK and US. The latter claims to have it in stock, as do some Amazon Marketplace suppliers, which is nice, if true…

The advantage of Amazon is, of course, that they will deliver post free.

Dory Previn has died

I hadn't heard Dory Previn had died until I read this obituary in The Guardian this morning. And I hadn't realised how old she was: 86. In rock music, ten years older than Leonard Cohen is pretty old...

Unlike Len, Dory's music is deeply unfashionable these days. But like Len she was listened to in the seventies by those - like me - who were keen to hear a wide range of singer-songwriters baring their souls and finding some sort of universal echo in the minutiae of their individual lives.

A lot of the stuff coming out of that period was drivel, of course. Self-obsessed, self-satisfied, stuck tediously in the personal - or lost in some doomed attempt to sound poetic.

Dory largely avoided those traps. It was different - particularly for the adolescent boy I was then - to hear songs from the perspective of an older woman, dumped by a husband moving on to a younger model. The song 'Beware Of Young Girls' from On My Way To Where, about André and Mia Farrow, still sounds strikingly raw below its light surface, an intrusion on real hurt.

The album I bought back in the day and am most familiar with is Reflections In A Mud Puddle from 1971. Listening again today, probably for the first time in ten years, is a very interesting experience. There's a big band, with full string section and horns, very much drawing on her earlier film soundtrack experience; not ground-breaking, certainly not hip, then or now - but effective and engaging. The key, though, is her voice: high in the mix, not that good technically, unforced, undemonstrative, convincing. And quite a range of songs: 'Doppleganger' is rather like Mick Jagger ending 'Sympathy For The Devil' by telling you he's been talking about himself; the side-long suite 'Taps, Tremors and Time Steps' blends - not entirely successfully, but quite listenably - story lines about the death of her father, the airship Hindenburg crashing, and an earthquake.

So, not the strongest recommendation I've ever given, but Dory Previn definitely deserves more of an audience than she's currently got. If you're of my vintage and there's an old album or two lurking in your rack, dust them off for old time's sake and some pleasant surprises; and you youngsters, head for You Tube, as you do - here's a starter.

The Horse

Some of the best musical news so far in 2012 is that Neil Young and Crazy Horse are working together again for the first time in nearly a decade.

What a glorious, relentless noise they make together, carving out immense blocks of sound, like slices off a crawling glacier...

The first fruits - a 37 minute jam called (very appropriately) 'Horse Back' - has been posted on Neil's website here.

Bring on the album.