June 2011
1 post
6 tags
And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive...
Phosphorescent at Norwich Arts Centre, Norwich (Sunday 5th June 2011)
“They tumble and fight, and they’re beautiful.”
The four of them stand staggered in front of me, watching the band that’s describing them so perfectly.
It’s my last night at university before I return home. I’m watching Phosphorescent with my closest friends. The people who held on. The people who allowed me to hold on.
It...
May 2011
1 post
5 tags
Don't dream of yesterday.
The music of Noah And The Whale was the official soundtrack to my time at university. Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down came out shortly before my carefree first year, during which I listened to little else. The following year, The First Days Of Spring was released, which kept me company in the winter months during a bout of chronic fatigue. I have now finished my third and final year of...
August 2010
1 post
9 tags
We were born to be free range.
Hop Farm was the most hotly anticipated music festival of the summer. I even decided to choose it instead of a tenth year at Reading Festival. But, strangely, it didn’t have any of the usual pop or rock bands performing. There were no Dizzee Rascals and no U2s. Not even any Biffy Clyros or Feeders; just a few talented, young folk musicians, many of whom are still relatively unknown to the...
July 2010
2 posts
6 tags
Rastas never die.
Amsterdam wasn’t how I imagined it.
It was more plastic than I thought it would be. More luminous. Swiftly conquered and slowly forgotten. And as I sat in that pizzeria, the salty yellow margarita melting in front of me, I thought about all the places I would rather have been.
Home in Reading. By the river in Henley. Back in Africa.
We’d been travelling by train all day....
5 tags
The light I never knowed.
Hop Farm Festival, Kent (2nd & 3rd July 2010)
Hop Farm Festival was the best festival I’ve ever been to. But, in light of it, I never want to go to another music festival ever again.
You see, I’m not sure the whole “music festival” thing works. It’s kind of paradoxical. Especially when Van Morrison is headlining the Friday.
It was the first day of Hop Farm....
April 2010
6 posts
8 tags
The sweet sensation.
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club at The HMV Forum, London (Friday 23rd April 2010)
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club became my favourite band eight years ago, when my uncle took me to see them at The Forum. I was 13, and it was my second ever rock concert.
So tonight, as I stand outside the same venue once again and think back to the fateful night that’s forever tattooed to the back of my mind, they have...
4 tags
Don't ever leave me alone.
“I think it was in a way the feeling that it might be our last so let’s just show ‘em what we can do, let’s show each other what we can do and let’s try and have a good time doing it.” – Paul.
For Christmas last year, my dad bought me Abbey Road - the last album that The Beatles ever recorded.
I’d always loved The Beatles, but a while ago I realised, to my horror, the only...
8 tags
Unexpectedly we watched.
“Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight,
Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight
And for each and every underdog, soldier in the night;
And we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.”
There are two songs I can think of, which have captured something so powerful that they make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. One is Bob Dylan’s ‘Chimes Of...
7 tags
Baby, we were born to die.
I haven’t been this excited about a band for a very long time.
The best part is, it was all a surreal accident.
It’s three weeks ago. 3 am. I’m hunched over my MacBook, staring at a blank page. Shoulders aching, beads of sweat sliding down my temples. Eyes dryer than my throat after the five coffees I’ve forced down it in the last two hours.
My degree demands that I write an essay on one of...
7 tags
Animal house.
It’s safe to say my life changed when I heard the first 11 chords of this song. Well, 12 if you count the slide-up/hammer-on thing at the beginning.
The Kingsmen’s version of Richard Berry’s ‘Louie Louie’ is the messiest, most unpolished song I have ever heard. It sounds like a rehearsal. A bad rehearsal. A rehearsal in a garage with broken instruments after...
9 tags
Burning for the ancient heavenly connection.
It only seems right to start this music blog by writing a piece about my all-time favourite album. Howl.
It’s the band’s third album. Before it, they released a debut self-titled album (which might also appear on Reindeer Armies one day) and its follow-up, Take Them On, On Your Own.
It was 2005. It was summer and I think it was a Saturday. I was in town and I had nothing to do. So...