After a slow start I’ve finally, slightly reluctantly, got into the Edinburgh Festival spirit. Although I enjoyed covering shows as a reviewer for the Edinburgh Evening News many moons ago, I have to admit I also have mixed feelings about it – after all the huge influx of tourists and increased pedestrian and road traffic is an almighty hassle for residents who are working and trying to get on with their lives (of quiet desperation – or is that just me).

However a lot of this is just bitterness because every time I’ve gone out during the festival I’ve had a brilliant laugh, an it’s most likely that my mixed feelings are just based on my jealousy of all the lucky swines who are prancing around for  month getting boozed up while I have to get up for work.

Because of this I never really get round to sitting down and planning to attend any fringe shows, but if the opportunity comes up through a friend I’m more than happy to go along to something. And it’s hard to beat boozing outside, shaking random celebrities’ hands and telling them ‘I love your work’ (at the weekend I drunkenly accosted the bloke from the Gadget Show and renowned luvvy Alan Cumming both of whom were very friendly, if slightly terrified) and taking advantage of the extended opening hours (5am!) at least once during August.

BROKEN RECORDS & BART FROM EAGLEOWL AT LACH’S ANTIHOOT

As usual I’m more attracted to the music stuff that’s happening – the only actual show I’ve been to so far was Lach’s Antihoot on Saturday night – again it was unexpected, I’d been at the cinema and got a text from Dylan who told me Bart from eagleowl was playing. As the Antihoot only starts at half past midnight and goes on to 3, I couldn’t resist hopping on a nightbus after seeing the film at Ocean Terminal  (Inception – which I thought was very good indeed).

The antihoot is on at the Gilded Balloon Nightclub at Teviot (tickets), which was packed and really buzzing, and as well as Bart’s short but sinister song which I think was called ‘Don’t Put That in Your Mouth’ or something similarly suggestive (the video below was suspiciously similar),  the guys from Broken Records played a couple of songs from their new album, both of which sounded great.

We were also treated to an extract from the late night Fringe comedy show ‘Lesbian Bathhouse’ which featured some surprisingly raunchy wet t-shirt action, and other treats included an inspired monologue about vans by the bizarre comedian Paul Foot, a brilliant RnB parody by ‘HP’s mate whose name escapes me’ who has sadly not recorded any of his songs yet but MUST (Pub Grub is a classic) – and a really varied selection of stand-up and songs, most of which was very good, some of which was amusing for all the wrong reasons, but which ultimately led to an extremely entertaining night.

FAMOUS DRUNK & THE DEVIL’S BUTTERMILKERS DO LACH’S ANTIHOOT

Being a masochist, and despite being stressed to the max every time I attempt to play live (and never learning that if I actually practiced the guitar it might make it less traumatic) I’ve signed up to play the antihoot next Saturday night. Having played the Sidewalk Café in New York where the antihoot has been for years, I couldn’t really not take part when Lach brought it to Edinburgh. My friend Iain and I are playing as ‘Famous Drunk’ – and then he and his lovely lady Aileen will be taking to the stage as ‘The Devil’s Buttermilkers’ (you might guess the connection if you’ve been reading the blog recently!).

WITHERED HAND,  STEVE MASON & RETREAT!

I’m also hoping to go and see my favourite Edinburgh-based songwriter Withered Hand and the legend that is Steve Mason (The Beta Band/King Biscuit Time/Black Affair) who are playing as part of the Edge Festival. Also, hotly tipped locals The Last Battle are supporting Mr Hand, and I’ve not had a chance to see them yet so that would also be a good reason to go.

Then the following weekend is the return of the wonderful Retreat! Festival which has a stellar line up of Edinburgh’s best bands (including that bloke Withered Hand again).  I can’t overstate the importance of promoters like Bart and Emily from Retreat!, and Tallah from the Antihoot for making sure the best local acts are involved in the festival this year more than ever before, and actually convincing me to leave the house – not an easy task.

Free Retreat! Sampler:

other KC tunes on the album are the sprightly ‘Your Psycho Boyfriend’, and the more mournful ‘All I Ask’ and ‘Well Done’. Then we get some extremely lo-fi action from Mr Hand himself, with Panda Eyes, before No Cigarettes kicks in, and what an awesome version it is. 

Next we get Takeaway Food from the Religious Songs EP, a wee instrumental number and then three more KC tunes: ‘Only This Exam’, a demo version of Rims in which those DISGUSTING chorus lyrics are much more audible than on the album version, and ‘I Fall At the Last Hurdle’.

Oh and the last song will remain a secret because I’ve got the feeling KC would prefer it that way.. but I will tell you, it’s a lovely wee collection of songs by two of my favourite songwriters.

It has all of WH’s favourite themes, dysfunctional relationships, lapsed religion, and self-deprecation, not to mention beautiful banjos, harmonies and other such gorgeousness. Christmas starts here!

Get ‘It’s a Wonderful Lie’ Here.

This review of Withered Hand by Cope is probably the strangest thing I have read for a while, in which the Cope calls him a “wimp singer” and says he needs a good slapping, yet appears to rather like him at the same time, saying he is both “heroic” and “a catchy bastard”. Read it yourself here (he also reviews WH’s mates Paul Vickers and The Leg)

p.s. I will be doing an update on my 100 Days efforts to ‘get my shit together’ at the weekend.

Update: Following on from Digital Plamf’s comment below, here’s a song from the Bill Drummond album Cope refers to:

Bill Drummond – Julian Cope is Dead

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Read the first part, by Lauren Mayberry at The Skinny’s website

With the early shift at an end, Milo McLaughlin picked up the baton of alt-folk and home-brewed ales.

Rob St John brings the first phase of the day to a sublime close with his rich, stately vocals and impressive guitar work, for what was, alas, his last gig in Edinburgh for a while. He’s ably assisted by his usual band including Emily Scott on double bass. In fact there’s no doubt that the Do It Together ethos laid out by Withered Hand in the suitably lo-fi Retreat programme is in full evidence today as everyone here is doing it for the love, with musicians helping each other out at every opportunity and friends providing assistance with sound desk duties and the merch stall.

After a break for grub, the families with young children dissipate and the boozier late-starters arrive to sample the Forest Cafe’s unusual own brand brew. Rob St John is there again, playing harmonium on the sidelines, as My Tiny Robots demonstrate their ukelele-driven pop jangle. The sight of a few twitching thighs and hovering ankles suggests that if there had been room to dance, a few would have broke out some Ian Curtis style dance moves.

Enfant Bastard puts an end to any thoughts of the day settling into comfortable complacency though. Uncompromising as ever, he apparently decided on waking that day not to showcase his new gameboy/chip music direction and instead we’re treated to a rare full-band run through of some of his classic anti-folk back catalogue, with a reformed and brilliantly under-rehearsed Love Gestures. The set finishes with the surreal Michael Jackson which crashes uncertainly to a halt with a viciously unhinged and overloud guitar solo.

The scene is set for a couple of noisy appearances by both Come in Tokyo and Pineapple Chunks, and despite both creating a powerful racket, they seem to be lacking the killer tunes needed to ensure they stood out in such a strong line-up.

Meursault, however, once again prove themselves worthy of the growing hype surrounding them. Incorporating new album tracks, some laptop mangling courtesy of their Artfag side band, a shortened version of their beast of a track from the Playing with the Past project and the banjo-tastic lead song from latest EP Nothing Broke, their willingness to constantly develop their sound in public ensures there is no apathy from the audience, many of whom have seen them a good many times.

Speaking of beasts, events close with a coruscating performance from Auld Reekie’s answer to Slipknot, The Leg, with their freaky horrorshow masks. They’re a refreshingly raucous bunch even without sometime collaborator Paul Vickers, and a now notorious vomiting-in-mask incident proves to be the reward for the diehards who stay right to the end of a long and satisfying day – further proof that Edinburgh’s music scene is growing ever more potent.

For The Skinny

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these. Though I write/blog quite regularly about music I sometimes find it difficult to get excited about it these days, perhaps because the bands I like are getting so much positive coverage elsewhere in the blogosphere already (and on more prominent platforms than this humble blog) that I sometimes feel I have little extra to add. And I do find myself disappointed by a lot of it, though others have raved about it. I guess I have quite specific tastes.

Anyhow here are a few things that have gotten me excited about music again. I’ve been a fan of Dan Willson aka Withered Hand’s music for quite some time, and when I ordered the first EP from his myspace page via paypal, Dan turned up minutes later at my front door to hand deliver it – turned out he lived just round the corner but even so such good customer service is hard to find these days.

The EP also happened to be incredibly good and I featured him on the podcast back then so it’s great to see him take his rightful place as one of the best and better known songwriters in Edinburgh at the moment with his new album ‘Good News’, due out on 7th September. Though I like his lo-fi recordings just as much, it’s also nice to hear his songs recorded in such a lush way, and Dan’s often fragile voice sounds awesome as does the backing by the various Edinburgh alt-folk royalty who make up the full Withered Hand band.

There’s a great piece on it over on the excellent blog bylastyear’s girlwho points out that the album can be streamed and pre-ordered here and a four star review by Ally over at The Skinny.

Also out on Monday is the new album by The Arctic Monkeys. Whilst I don’t normally write about such mainstream fare I was unashamedly a huge fan of their first album and having seen them live at the time it was released I was quickly convinced that they’re the real deal.

The second album was pretty disappointing overall but had a couple of decent tunes, in particular ’505′. So despite ignoring much popular indie guitar rock I am still interested in hearing it. Let me know if you’ve heard it and what you think..

I also particularly enjoyed this song by Generationals despite, again, not being the kind of thing I usually listen to. StillI bought their album on emusic and it’s really rather good, at times reminding me of The Strokes, and at times reminding me of Remy Zero, who never did as well as they should have despite one of their songs being used as the theme for the enjoyably silly Superman teen drama Smallville.

There you go, I just outed myself as a fan of the Arctic Monkeys, Generationals, The Strokes, Remy Zero and Smallville all in a couple of paragraphs! If you are enjoying any seriously uncool stuff right now let me know in the comments – don’t leave me out here on my own!

In terms of upcoming gigs, the festival season is almost over, but before it ends I’ll have my first opportunity to catch the excellent Ambulances live at the Song By Toad gig this Sunday (hear them on the most recent podcast). Also playing are Meursault’s side project Artfag and the brilliantly deranged Enfant Bastard who was my highlight of the recent Retreat fest when he reformed the brilliant Love Gestures -Speaking of which, my joint review with Lauren Mayberry of the recent Retreat event has been submitted to los skinnymag so will hopefully see the light of day soon.

Finally, I will be going to see one of my favourite songwriters Jeffrey Lewis next Monday (who, in a nice circular fashion will be supported by Withered Hand). If you want a ticket be VERY quick as there are only a handful left:

Tickets available from Rippin Records, Tickets Scotland (Rose St), or online at Ticketweb, and from the Edge Festival website.

http://www.ticketweb.co.uk /
http://www.theedgefestival.com/content/default.asp?page=s1_1&gigid=808

Here’s some music stuff I’ve come across in the last week or so that I think deserve a bit of attention, and rather than expecting people to keep up with my posts on Facebook, Twitter and the like, I thought I’d try and pull them together here. It’s also an opportunity to give a shout-out to some people who are doing great stuff for the local and wider music community.

Whether this will actually be the first of regular weekly round-up post is really dependent on any feedback I get – let me know in the comments if you think it’s going to be useful or if you think I should stick to sporadically posting about the usual “random bollocks” as Matthew Toad would (accurately) have it. Future ones probably won’t be nearly as long as this but having been out of the loop for a while what with being away I’m playing catch up.

You’re Not Alone

Withered Hand’s new King Creosote produced EP is out this month and predictably, it’s FANTASTIC. I’ve written a wee review for next month’s Skinny which will be up here in a week or two, but in the meantime you can stream it in full over at the SL Records website which also has details about about the official launch on 9th June which has a very fine line-up indeed.

Kudos also to my good pal Sean Michaels at Said The Gramophone who thankfully hasn’t given up on Scottish music since moving back to Montreal (though these days he is mostly found travelling off to some other part of the world, the jammy git) and managed to get hold of a copy of the EP before me – like I said before, what a jammy git.

Time for Plan C?

Sean used to write for Plan B which is how I discovered it, and when he moved he gave away his entire collection of back issues, so I picked up quite a few. It took me a while to get into the writing style, but once I did I found it the best music magazine out there and I’ve subscribed ever since, so am very sad to see that the magazine has folded, which I discovered from heartfelt posts by contributor Stewart over at Beard and Lis/[last year's girl]. Co-founder of the mag and self-promoter extraordinaire Everett True is rarely short of words and he shares his thoughts over at his own blog.

Tart’s Tunes

Tart, who gave me an extraordinary amount of good advice about my trip to New York (don’t worry I’ll tell you about how it went soon) has a great post about how her music taste has changed over the years, inspired by a discussion over at Song By Toad. I have already scribbled something akin to this about my own developing tastes on several scraps of paper a while back so I will work on moulding it into something readable and share it with you soon.

(Join the) Slow Club

 This is a wonderful video from Off The Beaten Tracks of the wonderful Slow Club. I agree with everything Matthew says about their Homegame gig, they were great, and have very endearing personalities as well as being rather attractive to look at in the case of drummer/vocalist/guitarist Rebecca (which is why I’m letting them away with playing a Christmas song in the middle of May). 

 OTBT even have another new session up already by Frightened Rabbit, making for a very impressive choice of bands for their first five sessions – and I really like the format of the site, with their ‘Off The Beaten Facts’ about each band – very nicely done.

Speaking of slow, I am ridiculously slow on the uptake sometimes, and hadn’t been aware of Euan’s club Trampoline or his band The Kays Lavelle until very recently, but it has slowly dawned on me after subscribing to his very readable blog. Anyway, there’s a great interview with him over on the Scotsman’s Under The Radar blog – and it’s clear from this and his line-ups the man has good taste (ok, quite similar to mine)  - he likes the Japanese War Effort for a start…

..and Jamie from JWE plays with his latest project Conquering Animal Sound this Saturday at an all-too-rare Gentle Invasion night also featuring the brilliantly named ‘Moustache of Insanity’.  To whet your appetite you can download a rather splendid mixtape by CAS free over at Last.fm.

Phew! That took quite a while didn’t it..

Yes I have finally experienced the Fence Homegame in Anstruther and it was well worth the wait. The above video diary shows a few of the bands we saw, a lot of which have already featured on the podcasts. I only had very limited space on my wee digital camera so didn’t manage to capture everything, e.g.Viking Moses leading us in a mass singalong of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Lover Lover Lover’, Pictish Trail doing a lovely cover of Hot Chip’s Boy From School, James Yorkston doing a great live version of ‘Woozy with Cider’ and numerous other perfect moments.

In fact, because so much was going on simultaneously in different venues, we totally missed loads of special events like the Three Craws (the hall was full by the time we got there), Ichi who many said was their highlight, any other secret shows that I didn’t have a ticket for like James Yorkston doing Daniel Johnston covers.. the list goes on. I have to say I would be gutted to miss those things if I didn’t have such an amazing time at the things I did go to. 

I can see now that Fence is all about the Homegame experience, and the rest of the year I will be just biding time for the next one – it has to be the friendliest, most laid back festival I’ve been to. But it looks likely that next year’s event will be a smaller one, so good luck getting tickets if you fancy going…

Jeffrey Lewis had just played a gig with Jarvis Cocker to celebrate 30 years of Rough Trade up the road at new venue The Picturehouse (used to be ned knife crime magnet Revolution). Those aware of his secret gig afterwards in tiny venue Henry’s Cellar Bar alongside sets by Stanley Brinks, aka Andre Herman Dune, Ish Marquez, and local antifolk heroes Withered Hand, were probably, like me, reluctant to pay £20 to see him in a big soulless venue (I went to karaoke instead).

Of course a lot of the people there did come directly from the Rough Trade gig, and feck me, was it busy. In fact the event suffered from the same problems as the recent Fence Club, where due to the venue layout, not many people could see the stage – and so instead, they talk – LOUDLY. Hence why I was trying to get everyone to be quiet during Stanley Brinks‘ excellent set, which I’m a bit embarrassed about, but it seemed to work a little bit, for a little while at least, even if people did look at me like I had two heads for telling them to shut it.

Jeff Lewis was of course, fantastic. (See my review of his 2006 Edinburgh gig) He was selling his comics on a stall beside the stage so I bought issue 1 with a free “history of punk” mini-CD and he was very approachable and friendly. I’d never heard, or heard of Ish Marquez before, but his set was a bit of a revelation – he was very very good indeed. The ridiculously talented Stanley Brinks even accompanied him on guitar like he did with the Wave Pictures when they played Edinburgh recently, and then played what I believe is an oboe (correct me if I’m wrong) with Mr Lewis.

Withered Hand, joined by friends including Neil Pennycook of Meursault, was excellent as always and obviously revelling in having two of his heroes watch him from the side of the stage – a momentous occasion indeed for the Edinburgh wing of anti/alt-folk, which just seems to go from strength to strength at the moment.

See more photos on my flickr page