hissyfit: The Purbeck Festival

Monday 25 August 2014

The Purbeck Festival

I've just got home from a fairly challenging weekend at The Purbeck Folk Festival.

It's set on a splendid little peninsular in Dorset, just up from the Jurassic Coast.

Four days surrounded by other people's noisy children, dressed in onesies (them, not us) and seemingly training for future life in a circus. We resided in a yurt and could be found permanently balancing our bums atop that now infamous 'long drop' before taking gloriously cold showers whilst standing in other peoples drippings... I think that they should introduce the practice as a replacement for the much maligned idea of National Service for toughening up the young or feeble minded. Four days of that prepares you for anything.

Di and Lou (our neighbor) had arrived early and were keen for our company. Di welcomed me with 'They're all into Bread', which I took to be a sure sign of middle age and quality control; whisper it, but I like a bit of David Gates myself. I said as much and the girls looked at me strangely until I realized that Di was making a disparaging remark about the bloodline of some of our camping neighbors... Aaah... 'They're all interbred...' I've got to admit that there was a high count of overbites and wandering Adam's apples. We tried not to make eye contact. And these weren't the cheap seats; this was the posh 'glamping' area; cordoned off with red tape and everything...

The music on offer was a real mixed bag, it seemed that most of the musicians were struggling with the austerity and stink too. Chris Wood was grey, grizzled and gloriously grumpy, poking at our comfort and conscience; breaking our hearts with his social commentaries and domestic dramas.
'My Darling's Downsized' was just exquisite.

Emily Barker (resplendent in a 'C*untry' Ain't a Dirty Word T shirt) and the Red Clay Halo were pretty damned fine too; their new album 'Dear River' is cracking and received a full airing.

This particular song kept the bottom lip wobbling after Wood...

In contrast, Eddie Reader was a joyful bundle of newly wed bliss. Boo Hewerdine was there too, to keep an eye on proceedings, and did a sterling job.

The live highlight was a surprise. I've got all Turin Brakes' albums; liked but never loved.

Live they were just awesome; a tight four piece; two guitars, bass and drums. It was a good old fashioned show. Exhilarating in fact. This clip is from elsewhere but gives you a taste of the dynamic...

Lloyd Cole played solo and also seemed to be suffering 'The Long Drop' blues. There sure seemed to be a bad smell under his nose. He didn't have much to say but when he did chat it was mumbled, acidic and arch. He wore a velvet jacket and slippers and played a fine set, re-imaginings of a fine back catalogue; brutally edited; I think that 'Rattlesnakes' was barely 2 minutes long. He encored with 'Forest Fire' which of course lacked that awesome guitar solo but was still fairly incendiary.

We drove home this morning in horizontal rain to upright loos with soft toilet paper and warm baths.

Joy!

And then I opened up my laptop and the first email awaiting me was this from Toronto Tim.

Strange serendipity...

TT:

I just stumbled across this video of a recent Lloyd Cole show.

You know how I've been moaning about how LC seems to be terminally glum, and getting a little long in the tooth to "rock"?

Well the bugger has proven me wrong.

Seems that he's having a ball here performing a blazing version of "Forest Fire" with a stellar band of Glasgow mates he's assembled, calling themselves The Leopards. Mick Slaven (Deacon Blue), Dougie MacIntyre (Love & Money), Campbell Owens (Aztec Camera), Jim Gash (Pearlfishers/Ricky Ross) & one of my favorite organists of all time (along with Federici & Tench) - longtime LC cohort Blair Cowan.

A fan spliced together this video with uploads of 4 other fans at the concert and did a pretty nice job. Low budget but fantastic!

Old Lloyd or Young Lloyd... Which do you prefer?

FOREST FIRE (live 2014 - Shepard's Bush): LLOYD COLE & THE LEOPARDS - THE FINAL ENCORE - Forest Fire @ Shepherd's Bush Empire



				LLOYD COLE & THE LEOPARDS - THE FINAL ENCORE...

				View on www.youtube.com	Preview by Yahoo

FOREST FIRE (live 1985 - Munich): Lloyd Cole and The Commotions - Forest Fire (Live HQ)

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Miracle Mile: A User's Guide by Johnny Black

Despite being based in a home studio in a rural backwater on the outskirts of West London, Miracle Mile chose to name themselves after a fictional gold rush main street half a world away where, according to adventure yarn spinner Jack London, ragged 49ers would blow their hard-won nuggets on booze and broads.
They apply a similarly unorthodox approach to their career in general. The band’s core duo of singer/guitarist Trevor Jones and multi-instrumentalist/arranger Marcus Cliffe have been relentless in their pursuit of the perfect song. Not the fastest, the gnarliest or the loudest, not even the most instantly commercial, but the song whose melody, lyrics, arrangement, performance and spirit might stand the test of time, giving pleasure to listeners not just for years but centuries.
They’d be the first to admit they haven’t yet found that perfect song and maybe never will, but I’d argue that their albums — the documentary evidence of that search — deserve a place alongside the best work of time-tested tunesmiths as elevated as Randy Newman, Elvis Costello or Tom Waits.

Marcus Cliffe wasn’t yet on board when the first album, Bicycle Thieves, arrived in 1997 but already it was evident that frontman Jones didn’t fit in with the prevailing mode. There was no rage, bitterness or self-loathing in his songs and nothing at all turned up to eleven. Instead, he offered meticulously orchestrated slices of ordinary human life, transforming the mundane into the marvellous with carefully crafted lyrics sincerely delivered. Even here, though, the hypnotic sample-based "Recycletwo" revealed a willingness to experiment that marked Jones out as more than just a pop craftsman in the vein of Crowded House or Aztec Camera.

What had started essentially as a recording project had become a five-piece live band by the time the follow-up, Candids, was released in 1998. Loaded with nagging guitar hooks and dynamic vocal interplay, it included one particularly affecting piece, "Small Ad," which featured just one line of lyric, the heart-rending couplet, "Baby’s shoes, never used." With those four words, Jones conjured up a yawning abyss of grief that other writers might struggle to evoke in an entire album.

Jones quickly realised that live performance was not his forte and retired to the womb of the studio for 1999’s third album, Slow Fade, which also saw the birth of the partnership that would lift Miracle Mile higher still above the norm. Marcus Cliffe, in demand as a player for Steve Earle, Emmylou Harris, Daniel Lanois, Mark Knopfler and others, was drafted in on upright bass.
Immediately the music took a more intimate turn, with Jones exploring the little things that illuminate the big things. Almost every song offers up at least one unforgettable line, like "I'd rather be ashes than dust" in "Everybody Loved You," or the concept of filling the void left by his loss of faith "with despair and metalware" in "Starwatching."
Slow Fade was further enhanced by the delicately filigreed swirls and swoops of England’s finest steel guitar maestro, B.J. Cole, whose style sat so well with Jones and Cliffe that he has become virtually a full-time member of the band.

And then, out of nowhere, catastrophe struck. Trevor Jones’ beloved sister died in tragic circumstances. It’s typical of the man that, rather than wallowing in his grief as he had every right to do, he dealt with his loss in the quiet, honest dignity of "Sister Song," the achingly lovely tribute that concludes the fourth album, Alaska. It can’t have been coincidence that the album, despite its meltingly beautiful musical landscape, was named for one of the coldest places on earth.

By the time of Stories We Could Tell in 2004, Miracle Mile were drawing critical plaudits in every significant British magazine and newspaper, along with comparisons to such pop pluperfectionists as Prefab Sprout and the Blue Nile. Critics were noting that Miracle Mile was fast becoming a repository of timelessly romantic music fueled by the same shamelessly emotional human concerns that inspired the great standards. More than this, it was being noticed that while most bands go into decline after two or three albums, Miracle Mile were getting better, perhaps because they’d avoided the trap of trying to be contemporary, and had no need to be more outrageous than the competition, largely because they didn’t see music as a competitor sport.

The sixth album, Glow, showed up in 2005 and found Jones and Cliffe further expanding their musical palette mixing Celtic folksiness with slow, semi-industrial percussion on the inspirational "An Average Sadness," blending Badalamenti guitars with Bacharach horns on "What Kate Did Next," and opening "Strange Sympathy" with a beautifully synthesised string orchestration before letting the song melt seamlessly into a laid-back country-rock rumination on the gap between aspiration and acquisition. Glow was also their most lavishly packaged disc, gorgeously presented at no small cost to themselves.

Album No. 7, Limbo, offered fifteen songs overflowing with sensitively wrought melodies and heart-fluttering lyricism. If it’s not a contradiction in terms, Limbo was even more quietly passionate than usual, deliciously understated and, at times, devastatingly tear-jerking.

‘Cassidy’s Care’ followed in 2012 and received similar critical acclaim.
Miracle Mile may just be too concerned with timeless quality for their own short-term commercial good. They’ll never sink a fang into the jugular when they can plant a whisper of a kiss on that sensitive spot at the nape of the neck and set off a tiny ripple that will, in the fullness of time, explode in the heart. I, for one, wouldn’t want it any other way.
Johnny Black

“Trevor Jones finds the poetry in real life; Marcus Cliffe anchors it in the sweetest pop. Gorgeous as ever. You may cry.”
Sunday Times

"Gentle enchantment. The loveliest melodies you've ever heard."
UNCUT

“Gorgeous melodies, hooks galore, intelligent lyrics that demand and repay careful listening, beautifully produced instrumentation, and an overall effect that combines poignancy and joy in equal measure. Music and words come together in a state as close to perfection as makes no difference, and leaves you with a delicious ache that makes you hug yourself with the sheer overwhelming joy of hearing such wonderful music. The beauty on offer here is enough to make you weep. It did me."
Americana UK

“A little oasis illuminated by musical creativity, glimpsed like a lovely mirage. Intelligent tunefulness that doesn’t kowtow to passing trends has always been as rare as fish fingernails, but it’s here.” Mojo

“Classic pop songwriting, gorgeously realised” The Times

“Moves you to tears and refreshes the soul. Scintillating.”
Maverick

“A tender sadness. Songs that have universal resonance.”
Netrhythms

"Trevor Jones has produced a gorgeous pop album that few will hear — unless there’s justice in the world.’ The Wall Street Journal

“Jones has compiled possibly the finest catalogue of adult pop. Gently beautiful and genuinely moving”
The Sunday Times

Monday 25 August 2014

The Purbeck Festival

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