I bloody love Trophy Wife and am quite depressed I still haven't seen them live. This live recording of their first single 'Microlite' partially makes up for it. Filmed in the leafy environs of St. Kevin's Park in Dublin when the band were over for the Dublin version of Camden Crawl 2 weekends ago, keyboardist Ben Rimmer takes to the fiddle (seriously!). But I'm not sure how I feel about Jody Prewett in those gigantic hipster spectacles. I approve of the acoustic guitar though. Watch it all go down [...]
Last weekend saw the Camden Crawl festival land in Dublin for the first time, with two nights of music spread across the city. State was on hand to report on the event and here's our pick of the acts from home and abroad. And So I Watch You From Afar - Button Factory, Friday Few bands seem to get better and better every time you see them live, but ASIWYFA are made of special stuff. New guitarist Niall Kennedy has filled the very big shoes of Tony Wright with aplomb, splicing [...]
![Festival Review: Camden Crawl 2012 [Saturday 5 May]](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/4251187_lg.jpg)
Camden Crawl (4-6 May 2012) // Words: Saam Das Last year, I somehow managed to see twenty bands across two days of the Camden Crawl . This year, I didn't quite get that far but came surprisingly close. Here's something of a chronological splurge of my wanderings around Camden on the Saturday of the festival (which followed the opening night's Koko event, somewhat separate from the Crawl itself). I began [...]

The irritating thing about most garage rock bands is that they fry the life out of their guitars and vocals because, well, they can't sing or play the guitar very well, so it disguises their lack of talent. The feedback and fuzz usually means any melody or flow to their songs is often lost in the mire. The sound originated in the late 60s, but through it's evolution, taking in 70s punk, 80s slacker indie and later on with grunge, the mostly-American sound has actually enjoyed some very good highlights. More recently we've noticed that it has continued its hit [...]
29.03 - We Have Band @ MusicBox, Lisboa 29.03 - Supernada @ Lux, Lisboa 30.03 - Mark Lanegan @ Hard Club, Porto 31.03 - Mark Lanegan @ TMN ao Vivo, Lisboa 31.03 - Trophy Wife @ MusicBox, Lisboa 31.03 - Clinging to Your Fever [Kraak DJ-Set] @ ACercadaNoite, Almada 04.04 - Supernada @ Hard Club, Porto 05.04 - Kraak DJ-Set @ LEFT, Lisboa 13.04 - Hold All the Cr3zy Inside [
23.03 - Class Actress @ Lux, Lisboa 24 a 25.03 - Low, Tindersticks, a Jigsaw in Festival para Gente Sentada @ Cine-Teatro António Lamoso, Santa Maria da Feira 26.03 - Tindersticks @ Cinema São Jorge, Lisboa 29.03 - We Have Band @ MusicBox, Lisboa 29.03 - Supernada @ Lux, Lisboa 30.03 - Mark Lanegan @ Hard Club, Porto 31.03 - Mark Lanegan @ TMN ao Vivo, Lisboa 31.03 - Trophy
Todos sabemos que el asunto de la fama en el mundo de la música es todo un misterio. Por qué algunos grupos sobresalen y se vuelven omnipresentes sin necesariamente ser los más innovadores y otros, con la misma calidad, no, es algo que toca reflexionar cada vez que alguno de nosotros conoce a una banda nueva y virtualmente desconocida (y digo virtualmente, porque con el Internet ya no existe eso de "nadie los conoce más que yo"). El grupo de esta semana, en esta sección llamada Under dedicada precisamente a hablar de grupos nuevos, es de hecho un [...]

Generic is such a loaded word in music. It was one of the first words that came to mind when I first listened to Alphabet Backwards, yet, it did not stop me from enjoying them at all. With my reviewer hat on it's easy to just look for something which is pushing the boundaries the entire time and hang my hopes on it but I just don't see why that is always integral to creating enjoyable music. As a little insight into my television habits, I recently watched Robert De Niro's politically charged classic Taxi Driver , as [...]
Posted in Play-This-List Soundbite Ok so there's two reasons I'm posting this video. 1. The designer in me freaked when I realized the visuals directly compliment the color scheme of our site & logo. Yes, that is a good enough reason to post. 2. The tune is catchy as fuck. Jonquil are part of Oxford music collective Blessing Force, [...]

When you're hunting around the edges for very new music you come across a lot of utter crap. That's the price we pay for setting ourselves up as your filtering service. Please don't think that we come across bands this awesome every time we look, we don't, it takes an eye-wateringly long time to wade through the myriad of bullshit pretenders before we stumble upon diamonds cut this way. And this is truly one of those diamond finds. You're going to love them. Your friends are going to love them. NME is going to slap them all over their radar [...]

This is my alternative list to the BBC's Sound Of', which always seems to me to feature artists who have pretty much broken already. That may sound pretentious of me, but I can assure you that's not my intention. I never forget the privileged position I have of hearing lots of great artists ahead of the curve. The price I pay tapping away at a keypad every evening & listening to every promo that hits the mat seems a small one, and I still get a real buzz from seeing & meeting emerging artists in small venues. This [...]
![[MP3 Playlist] Indie Dojo (December Part 1)](http://cdn.elbo.ws/posts/3927050_lg.jpg)
Ah the internet, a vast sea of hundreds of thousands of indie artists, floating around waiting for your bait to bite. We know the search for something good can be disheartening, spending hours on end sifting through murky waters. But that is why we are here, to do the dirty work for you. Behold, the indie playlist, a buffet of fresh indie artists we found and placed into one downloadable bucket for your listening pleasure. Some of these songs are fresh of the grill, a catch of the week if you will, and some we have already blogged, so feel [...]
When Trophy Wife were up north last month, they popped over to the Manchester Museum at the University of Manchester, where singer Jody Prewett performed a gorgeous acoustic version of 'Canopy Shade' in amongst the exhibits. Watch it below, courtesy of the lovely folks at Manchester Screenwipe. Trophy Wife's EP 'Bruxism' is out now. Click here to view the embedded video.

Blessing Force is a collaboration of bands, friends, artists and writers responsible for the building excitement surrounding the music scene in Oxford. It is a community of talent made up of a series of groups and individuals including Trophy Wife, Chad Valley, Solid Gold Dragons, Jonquil, Neon Pulse, Pet Moon and more. Grouping themselves under the one title of Blessing Force has allowed many of these artists to work together on projects and help one another freely with a common cause in mind. A project such as this is refreshing to see; promoting a sense of togetherness which is [...]

So we've made it to December... no more fall, no more November. We're about to be waist deep in mittens, holiday music on repeat, coke-cola polar bears and hopefully some J-mo spiked cider. To kick off this season-o-spiked-cider, we've got a jolly mix of tunes that will keep you warm until you finally bite the bullet and buy a winter coat after you lost your last one boozin too hard last February (or maybe that's just me.) <<<Download the Kick Kick Snare December Mixtape Here>>> Happy Holidays KickKickSnarers! We can't wait to [...]
Nov 22, 2011, 2:40pm
SGTMT

Tweet The deaf institute in Manchester is one of my favorite venues. The top floor makes you feel a little like you have gone back in time to some strange shrunken post war dance hall and it sounds great as well. The capacity cannot be much above 200 people and when it's packed it is wonderful. Trophy Wife had the difficult task of filling this room on a Monday night without a great deal of name recognition. So they had a crowd of 50 or [...]

Trophy Wife: "Canopy Shade" (Acoustic) [ mp3 ] We already gave you Chad Valley's take on the Paid produced track "Canopy Shade" by Trophy Wife , and now you can grab this beautiful organic version of the track for free. Drive slow... Oxford's Trophy Wife "Bruxism" EP is out now on Blessing Force.
Trophy Wife : Canopy Shade (Acoustic) - MP3 MP3 - Original
For their latest EP 'Bruxism', Oxford trio Trophy Wife worked with a different producer on each of the five tracks. You may recall having previously heard opening number 'Canopy Shade' - which they created with their musical heroes, electro duo Plaid. To refresh your memory, here it is: Read more...