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10. She Keeps Bees – Live in Feb / March
Earlier on in the year when I’d barely heard of a few other artists who were to become the staple postings of this blog I fell in love with a couple from Brooklyn called She Keeps Bees. Jess & Andy perform bluesy rock songs with an edge which makes them one of the most compelling live acts I’ve seen.
Jess is hilarious on-stage her banter with the crowd never fails to disappoint. I saw them for the first time at the Old Blue Last in February and then at The Lexington in early March, both shows were simply fantastic. Her sister was at the Lexington gig and she dedicated “Cage Match” off the first album to her, it was a beautiful moment. Then you have the relentless energy of “Gimme”, “Wear Red” and “Release”. Get a couple of recordings in the archives courtesy of NYC Taper.
They’ve not returned to the UK since then, hopefully early 2011 will rectify that. The last we had was the SKB-005 / Make it Easy 7” record which you should own.
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9. Warpaint – Noisemakers Session + Live Shows
I think the Exquisite Corpses EP is one of my favourite EP releases ever. I pretty much adore every song on it. From the shoegazey glory of “Stars”, the spellbinding vocal interchanges of “Beetles”, the rock vibe of “Elephants” to the simply gorgeous “Billie Holiday” there is nothing to fault. I didn’t think you could better the EP until I saw them live at The Great Escape and The Lexington in May and found out that Warpaint were even better live.
The proof came when the frankly amazing Noisemakers session was released showcasing the girls as one of the best groups to emerge from the spotlights this year.
Watch the session below and download it here.
As well as this beautiful acoustic version of “Billie Holiday”
Since then we’ve had the release of ‘The Fool’, a front cover of NME, two more great shows (Scala and Camden Barfly) yeah the girls are something special, Stella on the drums, hell yeah.
2011 promises more (BBC sound of 2011?!), unfortunately for me and fellow small venue chasers, the girls will be playing venues much, much bigger than I got used to this year but I shall be in attendance to see their rise and it’s good to see such a talented group being championed for a change rather than some Simon Cowell fodder.
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8. Mountain Man – Glastonbury
This was one of those aimless moments that will go down in memory for a long time, I was wondering around the Park at Glastonbury with no real place to go. England had been dumped out of the World Cup, my friends wanted to get a good spot for Stevie Wonder, act on stage were Tony Allen, MGMT and Jack Johnson and with zero interest in any of those acts I thought I’d climb the hill to where there was a big ‘Glastonbury 40’ sign for a couple of decent photos across the site.
As I got towards the summit of the hill I saw Conor from Villagers coming the other way from what looked like a big shack / tipi so I headed towards there for a snoop. When I got there three girls were singing a cappella to a crowd of about 15/20 people. It was breathtaking; I had never heard of them previously but was instantly smitten.
Beautiful songs and beautiful voices. Their chemistry was amazing and they were clearly having a great time, too much of one maybe as Amelia forgot the words which led to a mass hysteria until they composed themselves a few minutes later.
See it here:
and
After the set had finished (I caught about 15-20 minutes) investigation of the area led me to find it was called the Crow’s Nest and other acts that day were Villagers (hence seeing Conor!), as well one from The Magic Numbers which would have been a bit good. In 2011 I shall be going to the Crow’s Nest a lot. I advice you to do the same.
I've since seen Mountain Man a couple of times, once in Brighton and once at the equally beautiful St Giles in the Field Church in London. They are without doubt three of the nicest, charming and wonderful girls in music today. Their music is beautiful, there is nothing not to like when it comes to Mountain Man.
This leads nicely onto the next highlight…
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7. Dirty Projectors – Glastonbury
This was probably the highlight of the whole festival weekend, my mood was sky high after Mountain Man and it was a brave move to stay at The Park for a band I quite liked what I’d heard (which wasn’t a great deal) and miss Stevie Wonder.
One I only made because after four days of Glastonbury sun and England’s inept performance meant a trek back across to the other side of the festival and into 100,000 people didn’t particularly appeal to me. I don’t regret it. Yes, I missed Stevie Wonder and Michael Eavis “duet” but I got to see an exceptional performance by Dirty Projectors to a very appreciative crowd.
I never really listened to ‘Bitte Orca’ in 2009 so as a late adopter it was the first time I’d seen them, it didn’t take long to be smitten with songs as good as “Two Doves” and “Stillness in the Move”, one of the best performance I’ve seen this year from this talented American act.
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6. Finally falling for The National...
I saw The National back in 2005 at The 100 Club and I’m man enough to admit that I left early. I knew “Karen”, “Secret Meeting” and “Abel” back then and although I can’t recall the reasons why, clearly The National didn’t quite click with me and thus for the next however long I mainly ignored them…
Fast forward five years and I recall seeing the blogosphere going a little crazy for ‘Bloodbuzz Ohio’ so I gave it a listen, it was instant “Wow”. So I dug out my copy of ‘Alligator’ and it was schoolboy moment - How / Why had I let so long go by without actually giving The National more of an airing.
Thus in 2010 The National are my third top played artist I am completely smitten with the new album as well as ‘Alligator’ and ‘Boxer’ and feel frankly a bit of a fool, I’m glad my tastes appeared to have matured.
Probably my favourite song is “About Today” and it was great to see them play that when I finally caught The National live again at The Electric Ballroom, there was no early departure that day I promise and when I next caught them at Glastonbury they were one of the bands of the weekend. ‘High Violet’ has finally seen The National get some mainstream rewards, so the punishment for being so slow off the mark, is that from now on in I’ll be watching The National in larger arenas, that’s a price I’ll have to pay.
Moral of this story is simple – give music you listened to a few years and thought “nah” another try now, you might find yourself, older, wiser and a little more open to it.
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