The late, late, but promised review of a Norwegian Treasure...

Ok so this last month was a pretty quiet one on the blog front for which I eternally apologise, I guess October was such a big, bold and fantastic month with some awesome gigs including Joshua Radin, Goodtimes Goodtimes, Strange Folks that November was always going to be a lull, in fact I haven't been out to any live gigs for weeks...that's becoming quite torturous now! I will put it right soon. Aligned with that I've been a bit self-absorbed with a project which I can't yet speak of but some of you know about so consequently I haven't been at my communicative best.

But in all of that excitement towards the end of October and the distractions of late I forgot to blog about someone's album who I promised publicly to review...on my own blog...so tonight's entry and the first of a new month goes to the stunningly beautiful and totally amazing Ragz Nordset who is still winning the award by a country mile for most breathtaking and mindblowing acoustic performance of the year 2009...in the made up awards that I have yet to define or get corporate sponsorship for...


So for those of you who caught my blogs at the end of October (when I was blogging lots) Ragz played a set at The Bedford before I saw the Strange Folks guys. She came on stage, I'll admit to being a bit distracted until this about 5 seconds into the set when she began to sing and I think the expression "jaws to the floor" pretty much summed it up completely.

I'm not a big one for female vocalists, call it sexist, call it boring, call it gay, call it what you like a lot of female vocals just don't connect with me....probably because I'm a guy...but Ragz just floored me. So at the end of the set and having felt like I'd witnessed something immeasurably brilliant I sought out Ragz, had a quick chat and purchased a copy of both EPs...god I love a CD....there's nothing better than a physical CD, beats a download any day (I've said that before I think)!

So the next day I popped both onto my iPod and wanted to see if the EPs cemented my bewilderment further and a month on and having forgotten to blog about it...the answer is....YES, they most certainly did.

Little Stings (which is available on iTunes) is quite an interesting EP, there's something quite dynamic about it in the sense that it feels somewhat supercharged with a singer trying many different style of songs and different applications of her amazing vocals in search for the perfect mix either that or just purely showing of the diversity and complexity of her vocals, songwriting and music playing ability.


To give you an example Where It's Gone and You in the Back are real singer/songwriter songs, More reminds me of a classical ballad a sort of Mariah track (although a lot more understated). When I hear Run it reminds me of something very theatrical and the music has this certain Russian/Polish/Eastern European/Jewish vibe about it. Feel Something is kind of hard to place, it's a nice song but I can't put it anywhere.

Finally we come to Breathe, the last track of the EP which is a live recording. Undoubtedly in my opinion the best track on the EP. It hit me the first time I listened through that this was amazing, it was Ragz the singer/songwriter who stole a piece of me, killed it sweetly and sent it to musical heaven back in October. It's just the most amazing song, amazing vocals, it's just utterly beautiful a true gem of a song.

So then we flip over to the second EP, Love You Still which feels like we've seen Ragz grow and move forward musically settling into a formula that perpetuates amazing music in abundance...wow I'm throwing big words out there tonight!!!!

The EP truly is Ragz the accomplished singer/songwriter at her very, very best. Love You Still the title track is amazingly moving, it actually caught me a bit the first time I heard it properly, it just connected with me in a big way, the sentiments resonate with me. This theme of beautiful and mesmerising music flows right through Hold On and Oh Oh and then into No Fairytale which feels like an astonishingly personal piece of songwriting.



The all too short EP rounds off with Mitt....hold on I need to get my iPod for a bit of Norwegian...Mitt Hjerte Alltid Vanker...which translates to My Heart Always Wanders...no don't be daft I don't speak Norwegian, I did a bit of research and came up with this as a resource :-) Anyways Ragz here takes a psalm/hymn and uses it beautifully to show off her voice Acapella on what's actually quite a challenging track, and again pulls it off amazingly.

And you know what really truly baffles me most about Ragz, is why someone hasn't signed her on a major record deal. It's surely only a matter of time...it just has to be.

Ok that's me done for tonight, I feel I've finally fulfilled a promise I made and hopefully one day soon I'll be able to share some big an exciting news with the world...not quite yet...but soon I hope...there's an oncoming storm people...be prepared!

Nite all xxx

TFDI...

"Totally ****ing doing it....urgh urgh...totally ****ing doing..."

The immortal and now famous words of one great Jay Nash on the commencement of the Evening of the Feeling Song tour (see video below) featuring Matt Duke and Tony Lucca back in late August. The expression became shortened to TFDI and the tour spanning some 20 days as good as got renamed.



Whilst on the road, these 3 amazingly talented singer/songwriters were invited into studio in Illinois to spend the day recording a number of tracks...fast forward 2 months and released just 2 days ago in iTunes across the world...TFDI - The EP.



So it's an EP of 4 tracks, one by each artist (Slow It Down - Jay Nash, Sex and Reruns - Matt Duke and Pretty Things - Tony Lucca) and a cover of The Weight originally by late 60's - 70's (and then 80's to 90's) The Band.

Each song uniquely showcases the vocal talents of Matt, Tony and Jay but more than that it shows that when you place together three outstanding artists, their musical qualities are taken to a completely new level and the cover of The Weight is simply beautiful.


The EP debuted at #1 on the Singer/Songwriter chart on iTunes and currently sits at #3 which is a testimony both to the quality of the music but also that these three artists have managed to fuse together their talents and fanbases to form something of sizeable note and acclaim.

At $4, €4 or £3, you just can't afford to miss out on this. Go buy it now, you need to TFDI!

75 minutes of pure brilliance!

So this month has been quiet, in fact having just sat down to think about it for long enough I realised I haven't seen any live music AND that's maybe the reason why I've felt musically quite empty lately...well up until a whole host of music I received recently and then the discovery of 24 songs by the brilliant Paul Cook and the Chronicles which are available NOW for you to download for FREE!!!

So have you downloaded them yet? No? Why the hell not...it's FREE?!?!

And let me tell you, you'll not be in the least bit disappointed. Each and every one of the 24 songs available to download are outstanding and it's not often you can say that about any album or collection of music.


A mix of British pop, pop/rock, folk and rock focused mainly around the theme of love, relationships and heartbreak, Home Recordings show off both the talent of Paul as a musician but more importantly the depth of songwriting ability. I don't know why and maybe I'll be proving wrong but I have this feeling Paul is the type of singer/songwriter for whom words come easily. He's an uncomplicated songwriter, never trying to be overly clever, drawing on personal experiences, the messages in each song are clear and I'm a firm believer that there's no need to over complicate something...particularly if the concept is good.

There's a number of songs that really grab me but the one which is probably my absolute favourite and potentially one of the best songs I've heard this year is The Trees Cling To You (which I've posted in the sidebar in case some of you are being retarded and refusing to heed my advice and go and download the tracks).

It's a great little song which is I think is so quintessentially British and really portrays that feeling for longing for a totally amazing girl who just seems the centre of everyone elses world apart from yours (ooh that's quite deep...I think I should shut up there!). All I'll add to that is girls, at some point in your life at least one guy has felt like that about you and guys, you'll understand what I mean when you hear it.

Other tracks that really jump out for sheer quality and diversity are A Real Thunderbolt which deals with the absolute longing for the perfect life partner, Latest Squeeze which seems to nicely portray the feeling of being played by a woman (and also has a 70's feel to it) and Six Places, a song about making time and again falling in love and it going continually wrong. Oh and if none of those grab you, Monday Morning will resonate with the entire working world!


I actually can't recommend this collection of songs highly enough...if I were behind a record label I know what I'd do right now...oh, err... :-)

Night all xxx

The Free Chronicles

Some months ago, in fact the night I first became happily embroiled in the mystical musical world of The Collective (Stange Folks & Roy Rieck and The Medley Band) one other act at Monkey Chews caught my attention who I've been desperate to blog about again and to see in it's full glorious form...Paul Cook and The Chronicles.



Paul told me some months ago that "The Chronicles" part of the band wasn't quite formed and as such the gigs, albums, etc were a short while away. So as a nice little memory jogger, someone subscribed to my youtube channel yesterday and added the videos of Paul to their favourites on youtube.

That sparked me tonight to go and see what Paul's up to and there's quite some update. It appears "The Chronicles" part of the band is now formed, there's an upcoming gig at The Lexington in Islington on 7th December and Paul has recently released 24 tracks called "Home Recordings" for FREE on Last.FM. It actually equates to just under 76 minutes of music...for absolutely nothing.



There's some great tracks in there, although I can't tell you much more than that because at 24 tracks and having only ever heard 6 there is a stack of great new music for me to listen to and pass judgement on.

Go check Paul out, tell him how great he is and if you're in London, go see him on December 7th.

See ya soon folks xx

Driving is underrated...

Today I had the great pleasure of spending 3 hours in the car for work. Usually that'd be a real drag but for 3 uniquely brilliant things. First of all (and this is really something some of you particularly closer to the equator won't get) late autumn is amazing, I love the colours and there is something quite fascinating about piles of decaying leaves forming colourful patterns against usually mundane surfaces. Secondly, I realised how lucky I am to live in London. I drove past the Olympic site today and saw the rapid pace by which it's coming on and you know what, it made me proud to be British...even just for a moment. And to top it all off the sun was out and there was a lovely hazy foggy glow over the city which looked pretty cool.

So spending so much time in the car gave me a chance to have a really good musical session and to catch a second, third and maybe even fourth site of some music that I bought, played a bit then got distracted and moved on.

In fact I listened to 4 whole albums which I'd had for differing amounts of time. But for the purpose of tonight I'm going to focus on the artists that stunned me the most as was in fact first on...Cary Brothers.



I've had his EPs and his album "Who You Are" for a while and I really like his stuff but it never hit me how impressive it is. I fell in love with the album all over again. It's one of those albums that has an amazing array of sounds to it, there's some rich and complex ballads as well as a few upbeat rock tracks. There's a massive raft of musical sounds on show mixed in with at times some amazingly descriptive and painful (in the sense of hurting as opposed to bad) songwriting but what really hit me was the heavy piano ballads in particular The Glass Parade which almost knocked me off the road I was that engrossed in it. In fact it's one of those albums that has such a rich blend that I actually couldn't find one song I didn't like a lot and the overriding factor I was left with by the end of the album was "oh, is that it? i wanted more!".



Now I'll confess apart from having the music I didn't really know much about Cary until I did a bit of research for the blog and I discovered that he's actually quite well known and if you're of a certain age, you've almost probably heard of him as his songs have found their way into TV shows like Grey's Anatomy, ER, One Tree Hill, Smallville, Scrubs and a load of others...and that's why it probably took me so long to find his music...because I guess I just don't watch much TV let alone those shows.

Nonetheless, the album is awesome and if you don't know who he is, you need to go and find out more...right now!

Have a fun evening folks x

Breaking the silence...

So having gone quiet and having to apologise for going AWOL I find myself having to do the same again having been MIA for the past week. Truth be told I've been busy but also feeling musically rather "constipated". I haven't had a lot of time to go search for new music and I haven't found anything that's made me go wow, apart from the stacks of amazing music on my iPod.

But I found something worth sharing at last!

On a random myspace scan I came across the interesting Speechwriters LLC. Stupidly I didn't write down the path by which I got there and now I don't remember even using the back buttons in the browser doesn't help. Anyways here's a brief background ripped right from their myspace page...

Speechwriters LLC was initially conceived as a cautious alliance between West Coast songwriters Dave Lowensohn and Misha Chellam, who quickly became inseparable and have spent most of the 21st century touring the country in borrowed minivans. They've won countless, meaningless awards, and once loaned Jay Farrar their amp.

Musically they remind me of a cross between Blind Pilot and Semisonic, and a quick search has just shown that they've got 4 albums including a recently uploaded 6 track demo from their album Indifferent Cities.



You can, like me, download Regional Variations here and you can find out some more about the guys and their music here.

I'm heading off to go and do some more research right about now!

See ya x