Let's Eat Grandma - Falling Into Me (Reading + Leeds 2018)

A suitably atmospheric performance taken from their Reading and Leeds Festival set in 2018, the band have also just made available their full set from Ypsigrock 2019 here.

Fantasy Festival number 9: The Lineup

Fran Lobo: North East London artist Fran Lobo has released a couple of highly distinctive dark electro collages in 2019 and 2020. You can read her PRS Foundation profile here and she's also on Bandcamp.

BABii: The innovative electro artist BABii is described in biogs, somewhat whimsically (and very much tongue in cheek) as "a small girl who makes big noises". Her debut album HiiDE was released in 2019 and you can find her on Bandcamp.

J Grrey: Soully South London born singer and musician JGrrey has been building a buzz since 2017, with impressive sessions and EP's and strong interviews such as this one for Line Of Best Fit in 2019.  You can find out more over on her website.

Shopping: London/Glasgow based post punk band Shopping are achingly cool; all angular riffs and fat baselines, but they also make music that you can dance to in the spirit of all the best early 80s music. You can find them on Bandcamp.

Let's Eat Grandma: Norwich duo Rosa and Jenny have been making music together since they were in their early teens. Now touching 21, they are veterans of the live scene, and have turned in two albums of experimental soundscapes. You can find out more about them over on their website.

Georgia: Woman of the moment, Georgia has come a long way since she initially featured in the 2017  Fantasy Festival series. Then, she'd not long released her post grime self titled debut album, and was working on her second album. That second album was a much dancer affair, went down well with, well, everyone it seems, and the drummer, singer and producer has been rightly lauded ever since. This should have been a summer of gigs and festivals for her. Maybe next year.

Little Simz: London rapper and actor Simbiatu 'Simbi' Abisola Abiola Ajikawo is onto her third album of fast and ferocious energetic hip hop. Recent track 'Might bang, might not' has become a staple of the 6Music playlist, and was recorded in lockdown. It is taken from her new EP Drop 6. You can find her on Bandcamp.

FKA Twigs: Tahliah Debrett Barnett, better known as FKA Twigs, makes often ethereal, frequently mercilessly unyieldingly hard, experimental electronic and R&B influenced art pop. There really is nothing, and no one, like her in music and she deserves a headline slot. She is signed to the famed Young Turks label, and her page is here.

Songs of the year: Number 2

Let's Eat Grandma's 'Falling into me' has come very, very close to being my number one song of the year. It felt like such an exciting, refreshing listen when it was released.

The product of two teenage geniuses from Norwich, already releasing their second album, 'Falling into me' combines everything that is good about pop music, electro, and creativity. It's a sprawling sonic landscape of possibility that seems to take in and reinterpret every possible aspect of dance music possible. It's an exhilarating ride.

Great things continue to be expected of this duo.

End of year roundup: Music

Welcome to part two of this years end of year roundup!

Today we're covering music.

Favourite breaking artist of the year:

Miya Folick

Premonitions was surely the most casually announced debut album ever? But when you've been quietly releasing songs as strong as 'God is a woman', 'Talking with strangers' and 'Deadbody' for the past year and a bit, you can afford to be confident. Folick is going to be a stealth artist I think, creeping up on people...

Favourite video of the year

Laura Gibson, 'Domestication'

There's some subtle Handmaid's Tale stuff going on in this video... Making it very timely as well as very powerful.

Favourite gig of the year

Florence + The Machine, Manchester Arena, 23 November

As discussed previously, I didn't write a gig review, I wrote a fan essay instead. If you'd like to read a proper review, you can do so here. 

Artist to watch in 2019

Suzi Wu

One of this years BBC Introducing alumni, and a sharply acerbic artist with great attitude and beats. Worth keeping an eye on if 'Taken Care Of' and 'Teenage Witch' are anything to go by. 

Albums of the year

10) Guttfull, Tits and Nails
9) Virginmarys, Northern Sun Sessions
8) She Makes War, Brace For Impact
7) Emma Back, Little World
6) Tami Neilson, Sassafrass
5) Santigold, I don’t want: The Goldfire Sessions
4) Tancred, Nightstand
3) Let’s Eat Grandma, I’m All Ears
2) Miya Folick, Premonitions
1) Florence + The Machine, High As Hope


Songs of the year will follow in separate posts, starting tomorrow...

Let's Eat Grandma - Ava (Official Audio)

There are two really exciting new albums due out on the 29th June.

Let's Eat Grandma's I'm All Ears is one of them.

New F-Word music playlist now up!

The latest F-Word music playlist is now up on the site!

As I hand the music section back to Jo Whitehead in July, this will (probably?) be my last music playlist for the site.

As such, I had intended to go out with a bit of a bang, playlist wise, and didn't really have any other ideas or themes aside from that. Oh, apart from a thought that festival season is nearly upon us and, as such, maybe it would be nice to include that cover version of Joni Mitchell's 'Woodstock'.

Then, as I was working away putting the tracks together in Spotify (the Miya Folick version of 'Woodstock' did make the grade, you may or may not be interested to know), I realised that, quite unconsciously, a theme had developed.

It was all about youth and being young.

As I say in my post over on the site:

I've tried to include songs by artists at, or near, the start of their careers as this felt like a good way of getting a sense of freshness and, on occasion, rage as well as innovation. I'd been doing this, to an extent, anyway in that I'd been trying out a lot of new songs by new artists, but I also realised that I'd been adding in songs from more established artists from the beginning of their careers, and that this worked well with the new stuff.

I'm really pleased with how it all worked out and, unlike February's playlist, there is a bit more light with the shade this time.

You can read the blog post, and listen to the playlist, on the F-Word website.

Endings are as important as beginnings with playlists and, quite early on, I knew two things:

1) I wanted to make a feature of/draw attention to Let's Eat Grandma and their excellent track 'Falling Into Me' because it felt like the most exciting thing I'd heard in ages.

2) I wanted to finish with Florence + The Machine's 'Dog Days Are Over' because it would be a good way to get a big finish and, besides, reflected the position of the song in their live set (if you discount the encores that is).

Not sure if 'Dog Days Are Over' will remain in the same place, set wise, as F+TM head out for their live dates this year, but I can't imagine them not playing it.

For an example of the joy that is 'Dog Days...' live, check out this clip from Bonneroo in 2011:

The Sunday's track was originally going to be 'Here's Where The Story Ends', for a similar sense of closure, but it didn't work as well as I expected so it got switched for my favourite Sundays song 'Can't Be Sure' instead.

Let's Eat Grandma are also out on the road this summer, and are playing some festivals. There isn't a video for 'Falling Into Me' but the video for 'It's Not Just Me' is out now and I have been enjoying their video for 'Sax In The City' recently.

Let's Eat Grandma - Full Performance (Live on KEXP)

By way of follow up on yesterday's post. This is Let's Eat Grandma doing a set for KEXP in Iceland a year ago. The songs featured are from their first album, I, Gemini, which came out in 2016.

Let's Eat Grandma - Falling Into Me (Official Audio)

Ladies and Gentleman, the sound of 2018...

Precocious is not a word I would use lightly, but it really does apply in this case. June 2018 will see the release of the second album (I'm All Ears) by Norwich band Let's Eat Grandma, a duo comprised of Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth. Their debut, I, Gemini, was released in 2016 and they have been making music together since they were 13.

'Falling Into Me' is a gleeful, skipping pop odyssey that checks off pretty much every pop and electronica musical sub genre you can think of in a giddy effortless style. It demonstrates that, while they are only 17, they are also well and truly epic in their vision and really know how to execute it with ease.

Piccadilly Records await the new album with excited anticipation, as do I.

The band are currently on tour, and will be playing The Deaf Institute in Manchester tonight. You can see the rest of the details of their tour dates on their website.