The Staves - Roses (Live at WERS)

This clip of The Staves performing an EP track from a couple of years ago, 'Roses', was taken from a live session for WERS in the US. The Staves have played quite a few festivals now but, due to their position on the bill, the only full set recording I've been able to find is of their 2015 Glastonbury set. Regular readers might remember that this is the same live set I included in 2017's Fantasy Festival series, but it is worth re-watching.

Fantasy Festival number 2: The Lineup

Lily & Madeleine: Sisters Lily & Madeleine Jurkiewicz hail from Indianapolis, Indiana. They have released four albums of beautiful slightly melancholic folk pop. You can find out more about them over on their website.

The Staves: Another band of folky musician siblings, The Staves hail from Watford and have released three albums and a number of EP's. Their most recent release is a demo, 'Nothing's Gonna Happen' and you can find out more over on their website.

Angel Olsen: Angel Olsen's sound has evolved and transformed a number of times in recent years. Her most recent album, last years All Mirrors, was an 80s synth infused slice of layered baroque, whereas 2016's Your Woman alternated between folky Americana and punky garage. You can find out more over on her website. 

Bat For Lashes: Natasha Khan's fifth album, Lost Girls, was one of the highlights of last year. To promote it she played a series of stripped down shows in which she talked the audience through her creative process and discussed the 80s synth pop and visual imagery that had influenced the album. You can find out more about Bat For Lashes over on her website.

Stevie Nicks: Member of the classic Rumours era lineup of Fleetwood Mac, and successful solo artist, Nicks has more recently been tagged as the probable inspiration for Daisy Jones in Taylor Jenkins Reed novel Daisy Jones and The Six. Her official website can be found here.

The Staves - Teeth White [Official Video]

It's a Staves kind of morning...

The Staves - No Me, No You, No More (Glastonbury, 2015)

This is the Staves performing 'No Me, No You, No More' at Glastonbury 2015. You can watch the full Glastonbury 2015 set online. 

Fantasy Festival #2: The Slightly Serious Festival - Lineup

Julia Jacklin: Julia Jacklin is an Australian singer/songwriter from the Blue Mountains, who has lived in Sydney for several years but is currently based in Barcelona. Her debut album, Don't Let The Kids Win, was released in October 2016. She makes catchy folk pop songs, and her voice is ever so slightly reminiscent of a young Kristen Hersh. She has just, in the past two days, played at Latitude, and is right in the middle of a load of European festival dates. 

Kelsey Lu: Kelsey Lu is a classically trained cellist who combines sparse highly atmospheric musical compositions with a real stop-'em-in-their-tracks voice. Her back story is an interesting one, and she seems to have been quickly taken under the wing of a number of supportive artists, which bodes well.   She has just played the Night + Day Festival in Iceland, and will be playing a series of US dates in the autumn.

The Staves: The Staves are a trio of folk rock singing sisters from London who have released two albums, 2012's Dead & Born & Grown and 2015's If I Was. Recent single 'Tired As Fuck' hinted at a more rock direction for the band, who are not currently touring, and are perhaps working on new material.

Estelle: Estelle, the London singer/songwriter whose musical output cannot clearly be tagged as purely soul when it also includes aspects of R&B, grime, hip hop and areas of dance music, has released four albums and has won several MOBO's plus one Grammy (for her Kanye West collaboration, 'American Boy') she is a musically versatile and commanding performer who performed a lot in 2016, but is not currently touring.

Regina Spektor: Regina Spektor is an American/Russian singer/songwriter who will be playing some UK dates in the next couple of weeks. Although best known for the song 'Samson', her musical output and style is more varied than that particular song would suggest, combining Russian folk elements on one hand and hip hop beats on the other.

Natacha Atlas: Natacha Atlas is an Egyptian-Belgium singer whose early work in the 1990s included collaborations with the global dance band Transglobal Underground. She combines Arabic music and western pop of a number of styles to create everything from atmospheric laments to global dance music. She will be playing two dates in France this year, one in August, one in October. 

Patti Smith: The legendary Patti Smith released her debut album, Horses, in 1975 and has been written of as the 'Godmother of punk', thanks to the cataclysmic effect Horses had on a number of artists on both sides of the Atlantic. Since punk, she has continued to be a musical touchstone and inspiration, meaning she has inspired artists as far apart as The Raincoats and Florence + The Machine. She played British Summer Time last year, second on the bill to Massive Attack. She is currently touring Europe.

Fantasy Festival #2: The Slightly Serious Festival

I have realised since creating this poster that I have spelt Natacha Atlas' name wrong. Sorry Natacha.

The Staves - Tired As Fuck [Official Video]

There's an unease, a disconnect, a jarring sense of the artificial while at the same time an incredible searing anger and vulnerability mixed in with the weariness that makes this video at once powerful and really quite difficult to watch.

My initial thought on hearing this song ( a few months back now) was "Ye Gods, you can tell that they were on the F+TM How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful tour in 2015", and while as gut reactions go it still holds true, the truth is undoubtably going to be more complex. I suspect that The Staves were on the verge of shifting in a more rock direction perhaps anyway, and that this is the advance guard of this new creative approach.

I look forward to hearing more.

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue #13

Red berried tree, Offerton

 Dolly Parton's 'The Seeker' soundtracks the opening scene and credits to a brilliant Canadian film from a few years back, The Year Dolly Parton was my mom. In the film, the young heroine, during a particularly intense personal crisis, develops the fantasy that her real mother is Dolly Parton, and embarks on a journey to be reunited with her. I reviewed the film for The F-Word a couple of years back, and would recommend it to anyone who is seeking a female coming of age film that is intelligent, with fully rounded complex characters, and not patronising or simplistic. 

The Staves have had a good year, with a second album, If I Was, and a support slot on the Florence + The Machine tour. 'Teeth White' was a particularly strong single, with a good strong sing along chorus that only added to its likeability and charm.

The Cornshed Sister's take on Le Cox Sportif's 'Dresden' is an impeccable combination of folk and nihilism that has truly anthemic qualities to it. It's been a couple of years now since their self titled debut came out, and it would be good to have another album.

We end with a moment of classic country with qualities of torch: Neko Case's 'Bought And Sold'

which was a standout track on a standout album, namely, Furnace Room Lullaby from 2000.

Image of Red berried tree, Offerton, by Cazz Blase. Copyright Cazz Blase, all rights reserved.