Joanna Newsom's wonderful performance at the Bridgewater last week was always going to be in the back of my mind when we returned to the hall on Wednesday night to see Will Oldham play his first gig in our fair city for quite a few years. It would be grossly unfair to compare the two: Newsom was born to play venues like this whereas I imagine Oldham's reaction when he saw the hall for the first time to be along the lines of "What the fuck!". After leading his band on to great applause he muttered something about [...]
In this new Indie Credential feature I'll be raiding my vinyl collection for some rare nuggets from yesteryear. I'll rip them kicking and screaming into mp3 format, pops and crackles intact, and serve them up for your listening pleasure. The Triffids' Field Of Glass EP is a genuine lost classic. Released in 1985, the EP is a record of their Peel Session recorded in November 1984 and produced by Mark Radcliffe, who was then an in-house producer at the Beeb before embarking on his glittering DJ career. Radcliffe did an excellent job in capturing [...]
On Sunday night I was upstairs checking my email. As I started to cross from one room into another, to turn off all the excess lights, I heard what I thought was our cat making a horrible noise - I thought he might be in pain. I started down the stairs when little Cosmo ran up them, fleeing from the kitchen but otherwise fine. I could still hear the noise. Halfway down I realised that The Ledge was in the kitchen listening to The Milk-Eyed Mender . 'Aha!' I thought, 'My first impression of Joanna Newsom really was not [...]
The first gig of a new year always seems to be a low-key affair. Last year it was ¡Forward, Russia!'s in-store at Piccadilly Records and the year before we saw a little-known band called Editors play to 30 people at the Night & Day. Gig-going activities for 2007 were kicked off on Friday night at Kro Bar, opposite the University Union on Oxford Road, where Hey! Manchester and PopArt vs Industry had put together another excellent line-up to follow on from the Klondyke Club gigs of last November. We arrived just as Julian [...]
Anyone manage to get Arcade Fire tickets this morning? I sure hope so cause they're pretty much the best live band I've ever seen. We've scored a pair for both nights in Manchester but the whole experience left me fuming, not ecstatic. This morning at about 8:50am I set out to find out who was selling tickets. The Ledge was going to try and get tickets for March 8 at the Manchester Apollo and I was meant to try for tickets for the following night, March 9. Ticketline had them "on sale soon," Ticketmaster had them "on sale [...]
Electro-shock Blues is not only my favourite Eels album, it is also one of my favourite albums ever. The songs relate E's experience with the suicide of his sister and the death of his mom from cancer and it came out about the same time I lost my father. The Ledge bought it for me after we heard Steve Lamacq play the closing track, "P.S. You Rock My World," and I commented on how good Beautiful Freak was and how much I'd enjoyed seeing them on the small stage at Lollapalooza the previous summer. [...]
Tickets to see The Hold Steady at Jabez Clegg on 13th Feb are now on sale at Ticketline at a cost of £7 inc. booking fee and around £1.75 for delivery. They don't seem to be up on the website just yet but you can call 0161 832 1111 to book or call in at the box office in St. Anne's Square. Thanks to Matt from Club Fandango for getting this sorted out. Ticketline Spread The Word:
I know we're a few hours behind the mighty Pitchfork with this one, but Win Butler has announced on the Arcade Fire website that the first single from their forthcoming album Neon Bible will be 'Black Mirror.' If you click Win's name in the previous link and go to Win's Diary you'll find an MP3 of the new song. Oh, and it's ace! If you're too lazy to follow the link, the album is out on March 5 here in the UK. Spread The Word:
Hurrah! The Hold Steady are touring and will be playing at Jabez Clegg on 13th February. The Hold Steady currently hold the title of "Band I Most Want To See Who I Haven't Seen Already And Haven't Died Or Split Up Yet" in my own pathetic reality. It's a Club Fandango promotion and if you go to their website you'll find a link to buy tickets which will direct you to the See Tickets website. Once you've found the gig on See Tickets you'll first notice the very reasonable price of £6 a ticket plus the obligatory booking fee of [...]
Welcome to the first in what will become an ongoing series of MP3 posts about songs released by bands we love which, well, are just a little bit shit. You know the sort: you've got on an album by one of your favourite artists and you get about 4 songs in and something comes on that just makes you groan with pain. It's a song you never skip because, well, an album is meant to be heard as an album, but it's really a chore to get through the track in question. We're also looking for suggestions for tracks to [...]
We've decided that our first post of 2007 should also be our first ever mp3 post, having been promising to post mp3s for so long but failing to get round to it. So, the following 18 mp3s are all songs that I was obsessed with at some point during 2006. Enjoy. Lambchop - Paperback Bible The opening track on Lambchop's excellent Damaged long player is effectively a list song describing items wanted and offered on an American swap shop style radio show. But a mundane list [...]
20. Oh You're So Silent Jens - Jens Lekman A compilation of singles and odds and sods it may be but there's barely a bad song on this. "Maple Leaves" is so good it's on there twice. 19. Let's Get Out Of This Country - Camera Obscura While Belle & Sebastian failed to impress me enough with the summery pop of The Life Pursuit, Camera Obscura were going from strength to strength, mixing up their twee pop with a devilish country twang and a hearty slice of Spectorish Wall Of Sound. [...]
It's that time of year again folks when everybody's making lists and I realise that I've barely listened to the stuff we bought this year because I'm still getting caught up with all the stuff I didn't get a chance to get into properly last year. So it's an odd list this, possibly, and there's a few that probably should have made it if I'd been able to wrestle them out of The Ledge's car a bit sooner than last week. But here goes: 20) The Organ, Grab That Gun [...]
We've seen some amazing gigs this year and this was a really difficult list to compile. It's worth the near-misses of Richard Hawley , Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Death Cab For Cutie getting a mention as well. But here's my top 10: 10) Calexico - Liverpool Academy, November 3 9) Tapes n Tapes - Liverpool Korova, August 31 8) My Morning Jacket - Manchester Academy 2, August 23 [...]
I went to a total of 59 gigs in 2006 and three festivals (if you count the three hours I spent at D:percussion). Of those 59 gigs, here's my top ten: Broken Social Scene - Manchester Academy 2, 14th February Nick Cave - Bridgewater Hall, 6th February Calexico/Iron And Wine - Manchester Academy, 21st April My Morning Jacket - Manchester Academy 2, 23rd August Lambchop - Liverpool Royal Philharmonic, 24th October [...]
It's sacrilege in our household to say that you're not particularly looking forward to seeing Morrissey but that's exactly how I felt last Friday. The gigs earlier in the year were fine but they were in intimate venues whereas Manchester's G-Mex holds thousands and I usually can't stand arena gigs. Having not been to a gig at G-Mex since Björk in 1993 I had forgotten about the grandeur of the venue and the great sense of history that you feel once inside. I was far less impressed by the festival style refreshments on offer with the dreadful Carling bar offering [...]
I've been holding back my top 20 gigs of the year list with the expectation that this one would be up there. The CSS live show has got quite a reputation and we unfortunately missed their Roadhouse gig a couple of months ago due to the fact that, well, we weren't quite up to speed on them back then. Shakes were first on. Two guys hunched over laptops and analogue synths, twiddling knobs, pressing buttons, pounding on electronic percussion as bass and drum programs throbbed from the speakers. What is this? Rave? Dance? Big Beat? [...]
It's been rather hectic here at Indie Cred so we're behind - again - and I'll be lucky if I can remember enough about this gig to write this, but I'm going to try. We went down to see Brakes yet again (what's that, 5 times for me this year now?) at the Roadhouse. It's the first sold out gig I've seen them play so we were expecting a bit more craziness than previously. It was, indeed, packed out when we arrived, in time for openers Tiny Dancers , a band [...]
While JustHipper and Bricking Chick were at the Apollo being thoroughly, and predictably, bored by Dirty Pretty Things I made my way back over to The Klondyke Club in Levenshulme for the second of three gigs there collectively promoted by Hey! Manchester , Pineapple Folk and Popart vs Industry . After the excellent Espers gig the week before, this time it was Danielson, a band I knew little about apart from that their album Ships is a big favourite among US bloggers in 2006 and that it contains a rather good, and quirky, song [...]
I was a fan of The Libertines back in the day. Not one of those "Pete is god. This is the greatest band ever," sort of Libs fan, but of the nature that I can appreciate good, original songwriting that sounds a lot like The Clash. The Ledge and I even went down to London to see them play at Brixton Academy, a gig which began with Chas n' Dave and ended with Pete having a strop on stage when he thought Carl looked at him sort of funny during "Can't Stand Me Now" and promptly attempted to [...]
The Indie Credential
Monday Music – 28 May 2012
Bison - Quill
