Music
Tramlines is a knowingly northern festival, celebrating all things Sheffield and Yorkshire (except Leeds). Spread over three days in spacious Hillsborough park setting, across the road from Sheffield Wednesday football ground, Tramlines is more north’s answer to British Summer Time in London’s Hyde Park, and so much better. Here follows markontour’s review of Tramlines 2026.
I had to miss Glastonbury this year, which is usually my best introduction to new bands, but it has still been as difficult as ever to choose my fifteen favourite songs released in the last twelve months. If I get time there will be a B-Sides collection too, but for now herewith markontour’s Festive Fifteen 2025, in everlasting homage to DJ-supreme, John Peel.
This was a sun-drenched, chilled-out Green Man festival, which reverberated to Free Palestine chants, celebrated tolerance and diversity, and delivered joyous moment after joyous moment. As always, the line-up was full of wonderful introductions as well as old favourites. The food and drink were next level compared with most festivals (the variety of cakes on the Llangattock School stall making up for the lack of mango ale or cider this year) and the rolling hills of the Bannau Brycheniog providing the ultimate framing.
Four music-filled days in the idyllic grounds of a Suffolk hall, spent with many of my oldest and dearest friends – Latitude 2025 was, unsurprisingly, a joy-filled experienced. This was a year to particularly enjoy discovering new bands (a large chunk of the best of whom hailed from Ireland), although one headline act served up surprise euphoria. As usual, Latitude also delivered so much more than music, including stimulating nature and science stages, world-class acrobatics, and a space-faring puppet dog. Here follows markontour’s review of Latitude 2025.
Just in time for Xmas, it’s markontour’s annual Festive Fifteen – my favourite songs released in 2024. Not festive. Not fifteen. All as usual. It seems quite a laidback, reflective playlist, which hardly reflects my year, but if music is therapy.. And it leaves out some of the bands whose albums I have listened to most in the last twelve months (Public Service Broadcasting’s typically epic ‘The Last Flight’; Nick Cave’s cathartic ‘Wild God’; Jamie Webster mixing pop and politics on ‘Ten For The People’) but which I couldn’t identify an individual track that would work in the compilation. And Bruce didn’t release anything new this year. I hope you enjoy (at least some of them).
Given tickets for Green Man sold out in 2 hours for this year’s event, I am hesitant about adding to the growing list of rave reviews for this carnival of music, comedy, crafts and beer that consistently delivers the best vibes of the British festival scene. But Green Man 2024 was SO good.
I used to do an annual review of the world’s greatest musical festival with gig ratings and everything, but reading through this year’s blog I realise it has become more of a diary to remind me why I enjoyed my Glastonbury week so much. In any case, here follows markontour’s Glastonbury experience 2024.
I lucked-out last night travelling back by train from Stockholm to London by way of Hamburg – getting to see Portsmouth band, Hotel Lux, at the Molotov Musikbar on the Reeperbahn.
I had the privilege of seeing my favourite band, Sea Power, twice this week. First in Bristol’s Trinity community arts centre and then, closer to home, at the Islington Assembly Halls. There were no moshing polar bears on this occasion, but everything else was as it ought to be: lyrics welcoming Eastern European migrants (“Are you of legal drinking age? On minimum wage? Well welcome in”), a stage full of trees, stirring instrumentals of pounding drums, jangling guitars, hypnotic violin and rousing brass, celebration of the night’s sky, and an open-armed salutation from the stage that had everyone in their dedicated fanbase smiling all evening.
As the year draws to a close it’s time for markontour’s annual homage to John Peel’s ‘Festive Fifty’. As usual, my list is not festive and doesn’t even manage the fifteen tracks I habitual aim for and fail to achieve. But these are my favourite songs released in 2023. Given how much I have travelled this year, there’s a paucity of bands from beyond the Anglo-Saxon world, so that’s by New Year’s Resolution sorted, but I hope you enjoy them as much I have just the same.
A festival that merely by virtue of its stunning location is as much a celebration of Cymru/Wales as it is the glorious music that drifts out around Bannau Brycheiniog national park for four days at the end of August. 2023 was a year of discovering lots of exciting new bands, mixed with a bit of eye-misting nostalgia, the largest selection of beers of any festival markontour has ever been too (and thanks to the wonderful staff at the Mantle/Brecon end of the bar, who put up with our chat-filled procrastination for another year), and that gorgeous, gorgeous Welsh hill scenery for a backdrop. Here follows markontour’s round-up of Green Man Festival 2023:
Despite part-inspiring one of my favourite Clash songs, ‘Spanish Bombs’, until visiting Andulucia this summer I knew nothing about the legendary Spanish poet and playwright, Federica Garcia Lorca, other than the intriguing reference in Joe Strummer’s lyric: “Oh please leave the ventana open / Federico Garcia Lorca is dead and gone”. Today in the small tourist village of Pampaneira, a dense huddle of whitewashed stone houses cramped onto impossibly steep terraces on the southern edge of an escarpment of the Sierra Nevada, I was intrigued again by Lorca – this time generating enough impetus to read up a bit.
“Welcome to paradise” proclaimed Sea Power frontman, Jan, during their Saturday night set. It could have seemed an incongruous statement, being made from atop a scaffolding-constructed stage in a cow-barn, and yet Krankenhaus 2023 has a good claim to be festival perfection.
There was sunshine, there was rain, bands I’ve loved for 30 years, amazing bands I’d never seen before, top-notch comedy, and plenty of opportunity to dance and sing. I loved Latitude! Herewith the markontour guide to one festival goer’s Latitude 2023.
I’m not sure I’ve ever laughed so much at a music gig. Caitlin Rose self-deprecatingly protested that half her act was comedy and it was almost true. Almost except the most compelling voice in alt-country back on stage for the first time in seven years, to the delight of a sell-out crowd at Bristol’s The Fleece.
The Museum of Broadway made for educative departure-day lunch break after a busy week in New York. Charting the genesis of the world’s most famous theatre district, on what an opening frame recognises as Lenape land, the museum takes the visitor on a chronological entertainment journey filled with song, costume and, less expectedly, mirrors.
Gently Tender at the Omeara last week was one of those joyous occasions where band and crowd are united in unbridled dedication to enjoying the night.
It is the season of lists and best-of-the-year’s, so here’s my annual contribution: the fifteen songs released in 2022 which have most inspired and uplifted me. In keeping with precedent, there are more than fifteen songs in the list and none of them are festive. I am indebted as always to the late, great John Peel and the inspiration of his Festive Fifty.
Nestled between the west bank of the river Usk and the eastern side of the Monmouth and Brecon canal, protected by the gently rolling hulk of the Black Mountains, and boasting the best selection of beers and ciders at any festival I’ve ever been too, Green Man is much more than a music event. Here follows markontour’s review of the bliss that was Green Man 2022.
What a perfect weekend. Despite the late nights, I always come away from Latitude feeling relaxed rather than tired. This was a largely hot one and so we managed to spend most of Sunday just lounging in the wooded shade of the Sunrise stage, watching great new band after great new band. Elsewhere, alongside all the music, there was Disco Yoga, Maseoke, street dance, performance poetry, decent vegan/veggie food, and swimming in the lake. Couldn’t ask for more.
Aah – what a feeling it was to be back. The first Glastonbury in three years and everyone was well up for it, including the weather gods, who were enjoying the spectacle so much they forgot to send rain. Unlike 2010, when consecutive sunny days seemed to dampen the hedonism a bit, Glastonbury 2022 was one of the liveliest, loudest and happiest I can remember in 30 years. Here follows the markontour review of the bands I saw at Glastonbury 2022.
I’ve read a lot of music biographies, but Broken Greek is in a league of its own. For a start the author, Pete Paphides, writes about music for a living rather than performing it. More importantly, while Broken Greek’s timeline begins, quite traditionally, in the author’s infancy, six hundred pages later it ends with Paphides still in his early teens – an age at which many people are only just discovering bands. It is a measure of the authors’ precocious music obsessiveness that despite mostly relying on Paphides’ pre-pubescent experience of rock n roll his autobiography nevertheless provides a wonderfully evocative revisiting of punk, pop and rock, alongside a tender, sometimes poignant, and consistently laugh out loud funny examination of what it was like to be a young immigrant in 1970s and 1980s Britain.
A few days ago I was feeling good with myself, having polished my annual markontour favourite songs of the year list down to the fifteen tracks that would befit its title, and then Rough Trade went and sold me The Felice Brothers’ new album. Ah well. Herewith the sixteen tracks of the Festive Fifteen 2021. The usual rules apply: all songs must have been released this calendar year, one song per band, no re-releases, plus an indeterminate number of bonus tracks, usually commemorating an artist who passed away during the year. The full playlist is available on YouTube and Spotify.
Fontaines DC were the stand-out band at Green Man this year, with one of the most intense sets I’ve ever had the privilege of witnessing. But they could have run an open-mic session on the main stage and it would still have been a wonderful festival, such was the anticipation for Green Man 2021 in the markontour household. As it was, this was a bumper year, with many great performances from a mostly British and Irish line up, particularly from bands who have yet to get an album under their belts. Here follows markontour’s review of Green Man Festival 2021
I have become somewhat addicted in recent weeks to Widowspeak’s new album, ‘Plum’. The gateway drug was the Brooklyn duo’s dreamy, hypnotic cover of Dire Straits’ ‘Romeo and Juliet’ from a recent EP, ‘Honeychurch’. But now I am hooked on their own compositions, particularly the album’s title track.
Emily Barkers’ mesmerising ‘A Dark Murmuration of Words’ has been the soundtrack to my 2021 lockdown mornings. There’s both beauty and sadness in these songs that describe the natural world and what humanity has done to it, while bridging from nature to mull over human emotions.
December is here, which means it is time for the annual markontour Festive Fifteen. As usual, there’s nothing to do with Xmas in this compilation, just my favourite songs released in this very strange year and put together in homage to the much missed John Peel and his alternative Festive Fifty. The full playlist is available on my YouTube and Spotify channels.
Lockdown has proved just as busy as pre-COVID times, just with opportunities for discovering new music shifting from seeing live bands to listening to the radio. Favourites on the markontour playlist of late have included:
As we enter a third week of lock-down in Britain, markontour’s isolation playlist is growing nicely, now topped up by some wonderful on-line live sessions, Jarvis dj-ing from his living room, and the daily pleasure of Chris Packham and Megan McCubbin’s ‘Nature Livestreams’. The whole playlist is available here.
One of the upsides of Coronavirus home isolation is an increased chance to listen to music. In more normal times, I mostly discover new bands from chance attendance at concerts, and hear new tunes in record shops. In what might become a temporary/regular markontour feature, I offer up for collective enjoyment the bands and songs I have instead been introduced to in the last week via radio (mostly BBC Radio 6 Music and KEXP), Spotify and YouTube:
It’s been a markontour rule to always make an effort to see the support act, ever since I ill-advisedly bought tickets to see Simply Red (it was about 1988) but was rewarded by being introduced to The La’s. It is an approach to gig-going that reaped rewards again on Friday night, when Sierra Ferrell stole the show at the Teragram Ballroom, Los Angeles.
It has always been a markontour rule that while it is clearly wrong to assess a person by their looks, and generally an error to judge a book by its cover, it is completely acceptable to buy music on the basis of the album artwork alone. It is an approach that has stood me in good stead from London Calling to the Stone Roses, and is thoroughly vindicated in the case of the Black Pumas.
December is here, which means it is time for the annual markontour Festive Fifteen. As usual, there’s nothing to do with Xmas here, and there has been so much great music this year that I have yet again failed to whittle my list down to fifteen tracks. But, caveats aside, herewith The Festive Fifteen of 2019..
In a vital and captivating free new exhibition the Museum of London is celebrating forty-years since the release of London Calling by The Clash. It’s an album that is both precisely of its time and yet timeless, a spirit that the curators (working with the surviving members of the band) have managed to capture perfectly. Markontour has visited twice already in its first week and I’m sure I will be back a few more times before it closes in April.
“If you want to write a song about the human race / Write a song about the Moon” sang Paul Simon, a decade after Neil Armstrong became the first human being to set foot on land beyond the Earth, and so begins the National Maritime Museum’s ‘Moon’ exhibition. Despite having much sympathy with Gil Scott Heron’s more contemporaneous lyrical critique (“I can’t pay no doctor’s bill / But whitey’s on the Moon”), I can’t help continuing a life-long fascination with the Moon and the 1960s Space Race, and so a trip to this exhibition was somewhat inevitable. And it was worth it…
Having the hills and mountains of Wales as a backdrop helps make Green Man the most beautiful of British music festivals, a visual winning card that was matched this year by a gorgeous programme of folk-influenced performers, surely the largest array of decent ales and ciders outside of a beer festival, and the ritual of burning the eponymous green man, taking with it to the skies hand-written messages of the festival-goers hopes and dreams.
This weekend’s British Sea Power curated Krankenhaus festival on the Cumbrian coast has been pure joy. Housed in a barn on the Muncaster Castle estate, it felt like a legal rave curated by a nature-loving art-school band. Where else would you get hear everything from folk to tree-people trance, alongside a reading from the poet laureate, late night DJ-ing from a snooker legend, and musically enhanced bingo from Japanese punk band?
This year’s Glastonbury will be remembered for the sunny weather, for sure, but also the most extraordinary Pyramid stage show that I can remember in twenty-seven years as a Glastonbury regular. 2019 is the year that Stormzy headlined Glastonbury.
An incident at Malmo station yesterday meant my train to Stockholm was cancelled. I took advantage of an extra night in Copenhagen by going to see The Tallest Man on Earth at the extraordinary new DR Koncerthuset, a venue that looks like a giant cave, hewn out of granite and lined with oak. It turned out to be a magical experience, witnessing a unique performer entertaining with verve and panache.
For a quick trip to radio heaven, listen to Cerys Matthews’ show from 9 June 2019. Jeff Towns of Dylan’s Mobile Bookstore joins Cerys to discuss Idris Davies’ poem ‘The Bells of Rhymney’, which may be the most influential poem you’ve never heard. Documenting life in the South Wales mining villages of the 1920s, and based on Davies’ own experiences of following his father down the pits aged 14, the poem clearly influenced Dylan Thomas’ ‘Under Milkwood’ (just listen to the start), inspired Woody Guthrie’s ‘Talking Centralia’ (or ‘Talking Miner’), and was put to music by Pete Seeger, only to be covered first by Bob Dylan and then The Byrds.
The Leisure Society are Burton-on-Trent’s finest and Mark Knopfler’s old band, Dire Straits, are rumoured to have played the back room behind Veli’s Kebab Shop in the 1970s. Surely that’s enough of a connection for a joint gig review?
“What am I doing in Dubai?”, asks Aldous Harding at the start of ‘Zoo Eyes’, the third track on her third album, ‘Designer’. It would be a good question for almost anyone, but seems particularly pertinent for a New Zeland born avant-garde singer-songwriter. We never find out the answer, it being Harding’s practice to sing in riddles (a latter section of the song goes something like “I drove my inner child to a show / We talked all the way home / In the nectar”). But if that’s a problem then it is the only one with this perfectly wonderful, constantly inventive, total ear-worm of a record.
On Thursday night I found myself in church. As someone who has been an atheist since starting to read science fiction at the age of twelve, St John’s in Bethnal Green was an unlikely venue for an evening’s entertainment, but William Tyler was playing and a church turned out to be the perfect venue for his beautiful acoustic guitar finger-picking. @williamtylertn
All I knew about the East Pointers upon entering the Lexington last night was that, according to my friend, the lead singer is the most beautiful man she’s ever seen. I don’t feel qualified to give a definitive view on that, although he did have a great hat, but the band were straight out of the top drawer.
This year’s Festive Fifteen, my annual round-up of the best new songs I have had the pleasure of hearing this year, is the product of a multitude of influences. I discovered three of the artists at the wonderful Green Man Festival in Wales. Five tracks reached my ears courtesy of the ever-wonderful BBC Radio 6 (6 Music if you must). Only three were record shop recommendations, probably the smallest total in my decade of Festive Fifteens, and a sure sign that I am not spending enough time in those educational establishments. But that is balanced by the fact that I have enjoyed live shows by more than half of the featured artists – a very healthy state of affairs.
Gruff Rhys is an artist who specialises in creating something new, unique and wonderful at least once a year. Markontour and other fans of the band which brought him to indie-fame were distraught when the Super Furry Animals went on hiatus in 2010, but left to his own devices Gruff Rhys ventured off in all kinds of interesting directions. Last night we had the pleasure of seeing him in his latest incarnation, a seer of dystopia, performing his new album, Babelsberg, in front of a rapt Oxford audience.
This year marks the centenary of the first performance of Holsts’ epic symphony, ‘The Planets’, and a few Saturday’s ago I was lucky enough to enjoy a celebratory performance at the London Barbican. It was magical experience, giving this amazing work new life and, courtesy of Professor Brian Cox’s enthusiastic presence, introducing the latest scientific thinking to a piece of music whose creation owed more to astrology than astronomy.
I haven’t written any ‘Album of the Week’ reviews for a while, primarily because every time I put on my headphones I just want to listen to Israel Nash. His latest offering, ‘Lifted’, is a hippy Americana chill-out album, that inspires relaxed smiles. I saw him perform at Rough Trade in Brooklyn a few weeks ago and it was an equally blissed experience, despite the inspiration for much of the album coming from Nash’s despair at the state of American politics.
What I love about record stores is that you can walk in just to pass the time, get transfixed by a new tune, and walk out clutching the best new music you’ve heard in ages. Guitar shops are different. You’d have to be both very wealthy and obsessed to buy a new instrument on every visit. But the chat is often just as illuminating.
Seven days after seeing The National I still have ‘Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks’ on repeat in my head. London does a nice line in chilled-out summer festivals these days and last Saturday The National were the perfect headliners in Victoria Park, somehow invoking audience euphoria from a set-list that veritably wallowed in melancholy. The previous night I had enjoyed a different kind up uplift in Brixton, with Loyle Carner singing about his mum again and Erykah Badu suitably eccentric in a stetson.
If you ever find yourself near a barbershop in Dar es Salaam late at night and you hear music, follow the sound. You won’t be disappointed.
This isn’t really a blog, more of a link to Bill Drummond’s hilarious new work ‘Another Side of Bob Dylan – Part Two’, courtesy of the ever-wonderful Caught By The River website. I don’t want to spoil a word, but it involves a former Timelord explaining why he has been waiting for Bob Dylan for thirty-five years, with the proposition that “he should quit his Great American Song Book shit that he has been doing, and hit the road with me, and that we should – over a period of time – go to all the places in the British Isles where nine different languages were spoken 200 years ago, and find a song from each of those places, and then he should record them and I will produce it.” It’s pure genius and has enlivened what should have been a dull three hour stop-over in Joburg airport. Follow the link and enjoy!
It’s probably not reasonable to review a thirty year old classic album, but nevertheless I have a few things to say about Neil Young’s eponymous solo debut. Like so many other record purchases over the years I bought it because of the beautiful cover. But inside is a record of rare brilliance and it’s not even one of Neil Young’s best. Somehow, despite being a fan for over thirty years, I’ve never heard it before. Not a single track. As the needle hits the groove again there’s no question what I’m doing for the rest of the night…
Every Valley, Public Service Broadcasting’s third album, is a cleverly crafted concept album about the rise and fall of Welsh coal mining. That is going to sound quite niche, but trust me, Every Valley is worth forty-five minutes of any music-lover’s time. Moreover, not least because like it says on the tin, the band take inspiration for their songs from public service broadcasting, the album is even better seen performed live. Markontour had this pleasure in Leicester last week and was completely riveted by the combination of film and music.
Following a cracking gig at Shepherd’s Bush Empire last Friday, with some time off this week I’ve been rediscovering The Wonder Stuff via Miles Hunt’s engaging ‘Diaries 86-89′, accompanied by a trip through my vinyl back catalogue, and the Stuffies’ sparking, hard-edged indie-pop.
Another great gig from Middle Kids this week makes me thinks these Aussie newcomers are going to be special. On Wednesday night sixty or so privileged punters squeezed into The Waiting Room, a nicely refurbished box of a venue below the Three Crowns in Stoke Newington. Limited space meant bassist, Tim Fitz, was curtailed in his usual stage prowling, but the band showed no such constraint in delivering a powerful collection of indie-pop songs.
Austin lives up to its own billing as the live music capital of the world. Admittedly, markontour was visiting during the legendary South By South West (SXSW) tech/film/music festival, but you can only make judgements based on available data. On this basis Sixth Street is a gig-goers dream, where every bar and almost every restaurant has constant live bands from 4pm until past the midnight hour. If the evidence that I am alive wasn’t so overwhelming, a few nights in Austin might have convinced me that I had died and gone to heaven (putting to one side the anthropocene nightmare that is urban American traffic).
I’ve seen a LOT of brilliant British Sea Power gigs, but last at Koko was one of the very best. Amidst the anthemic tunes, hymns to libraries and protest, odes to nature, and celebration of bicycles, there was also a birthday cake launched into the crowd, and two bears dancing in the middle of the most-pit, along with the usual foliage adorned stage. The night ended with the band variously stage diving and leading the moves to Kelis’ ‘Milkshake’. Heaven.
A week after enjoying To Kill A King’s end of tour blow-out at Islington Assembly Hall, I finally have some time to properly get to know their new album. It’s dark and snowing in Paris and climate change has helped swell the Seine to nearly bank-bursting proportions, so Welcome To The Spiritual Dark Age’s twelve tracks all feel appropriate. Yet the band’s live performance of the record was full of life and joy. Maybe they are just the kind of band who get pleasure out of singing about melancholy – not unlike my eternal favourites, Elbow.
Herewith markontour’s annual homage to John Peel – a round-up of the best songs released in the last twelve months, or at least the best that I have manage to hear at gigs, in record shops and, most frequently, on headphones at 35,000 feet. Available on YouTube and Spotify. Enjoy!
Markontour had never heard of the Barr Brothers before their extraordinary gig at the Music Hall of Williamsburg last night. Now I’m sitting in La Guardia airport, mapping the intersections of my 2018 travel itinerary and their world tour.
Last time markontour had the pleasure of catching John Bramwell at the Union Chapel he’d lost his front teeth and was singing with a lisp. A year later and our hero has his dentures back, although the set-list still seems to have been scrawled on the back of an envelope in the pub a few minutes before coming on stage and there are numerous pauses while he delves deep to remember which of three guitars is needed for which song. Apparently. It is hard to tell where the show stops and the real-life semi-functioning alcoholic musical savant begins. Nevermind, it’s a wonderfully entertaining night for us lucky audience members and Bramwell himself seems like the happiest person in the congregation.
Markontour is getting used to being in the older quartile of any given concert audience, but on the Overground to Ally Pally to see Wolf Alice last Friday I realised that most of the other gig-goers were still at school. In between discussing their university choices and what time they needed to be home, a mock argument broke out about who had bagged the most impressive selfie with a celebrity. A lad who had an Instagram account laden with images of himself sharing a beer with Theo from the nights headline act appeared to be top dog, until a girl casually mentioned that she had gained a hug from Jeremy Corbyn. Silence ensued for a second, followed by a chorus of “wow!” and general agreement that nothing could beat that.
After the disappointment of watching Wales lose to the All Blacks in a game of rugby that was enthralling despite the result, I needed to write something positive about the motherland while I wait for Ms Markontour to meet me at the Slaughtered Lamb for a bit of Saturday night indie-folk. So, six days late, here follows a homage to Euros Childs and his idiosyncratic gig last week at Hoxton’s Seabright Arms.
The defining moment of a wonderful gig at Cecil Sharp House on Thursday night was when Peggy Seeger introduced one of the last songs penned by her late companion, Ewan MacColl. Written as he ambled round the lower reaches of a Peak District escarpment, watching Peggy and his daughter, Kitty, make a much-loved climb that he was now unable to undertake, MacColl wrote ‘The Joy of Living’. “Farewell you northern hills, you mountains all goodbye.. Farewell to you, my love, my time is almost done.. Give me your hand and love and join your voice with mine / And we’ll sing of the hurt and the pain and the joy of living”. Despite its poignancy it seems to perfectly sum up the live-life-to-the-full approach of this incredible woman, even if she didn’t write it herself.
“How does a lead singer change a lightbulb?”, asks Margo Price’s harmonica blowing husband during a break between songs. “She just holds the damn thing up and waits for the world to spin round her and screw it in” he explains, to his wife’s visible delight. For this is a night of smiles for Margo Price, who despite introducing a new album full of true-life tales of bad men, worse choices, and trouble with the bottle, looks and sounds like there isn’t a happier person on Earth.
Thanks to Billy Bragg’s first foray into non-fiction, ‘Roots Radicals and Rockers’, markontour is currently listening to Lonnie Donegan. Although I’m sceptical that ‘Rock Island Line’ would induce the same excitement in twenty-first century kids as it seemingly did in 1957, as Bragg turns out to be as eloquent in prose as he is in lyrical verse, I am nevertheless both highly entertained from taking the book’s journey and prepared to believe that skiffle did indeed change the musical world.
Hannah Peel loves the stars, synthesizers and Barnsley, although she’s slightly in denial about the latter. Mary Casio dreams of inter-stellar travel to Cassiopeia, the ‘W’-shaped…
I landed in New York just in time to catch a band last night, and my pot-luck choice turned out to be a blinder – Sydney indie-poppers, Middle Kids, at the Williamsburg Music Hall. Last time I was there it was to see a stunning set by Matthew E. Smith, a joy I inexplicably shared with only a half full audotorium. Last night it was pretty full, so presumably Middle Kids are already pretty established on the live-scene, despite only having a single EP for sale at the gig. Singer/songwriter, Hannah Joy, is a ready-made star. Time to find out a little more about them.
Ah – the last festival of the season, for markontour at least, and there couldn’t be a better conclusion than Festival No.6. This year’s festival was slimmed down a little and was all the better for it. The Port Meirion setting is so exquisite – Clough William Ellis’ faux Italian village, nestled between the mountains of Snowdonia and the Irish sea – it needs a little space to be enjoyed properly. Some of my favourite moments this year included sunrise over the beach as the estuary tide powered in, wandering around the woods trying to find the Ghost Gardens, and finishing the festival on a moon-lit Stone Boat. You don’t get so many of those moments with 20,000 people knocking around.
Ten Fe’s debut album, ‘Hit The Light’ has provided entrancing holiday listening and a host of instant ear-worms. It’s proper indie-pop, full of allusions to great songs of earlier days – although I still don’t get why The Guardian likened them to Springsteen.
Charlatans singer, Tim Burgess, has swapped drink and drugs for coffee and tweets, but his record buying obsession remains. Tim Book Two finds our hero feeding his crate-digging addiction in pursuit of vinyl targets set by a host of music luminaries over the course of a Charlatans world tour. It’s all an excuse to write with passion and depth about music and record shops and for anyone who loves either Tim Book Two is 257 pages of pure joy.
The western world’s greatest music festival is over for another year and 2017 was undoubtedly defined by the way that Glastonbury embraced Jeremy Corbyn. I’ve been going to this magical festival for 25 years and have experienced countless ‘Glastonbury moments’, when an entire crowd is moved to euphoria as one under the power of extraordinary musical performance, but I’ve never witnessed anything like this.
Martha are “a pop band from Durham” and they are wonderful. If you are not already addicted to their fast paced, jagged guitar music and sparkling…
I heard a lot of great music in 2016 and so it was hard to settle on just 15 tracks for the annual markontour ‘Festive Fifteen’.…
I know should be writing about Chuck Berry RIP, but after a weekend vinyl discovery in the Hornbeam cafe on the corner of my street, the…
My Mum and I have been promising each other we will do the family history for most of the last decade. Apps have been purchased, magazines subscribed to, even a few interviews undertaken, but the roots of the Watts/Collins family tree stubbornly refuse to extend further than the mid-nineteenth century. Thus, in an effort to stimulate greater endeavour, the markontour Matriach and I have agreed to write a monthly blog that is in some way stimulated by our geneological pursuits. Episode One starts with my Granddad singing from his armchair about a man who got a black eye from being hit with a tomato.
Seeing Elbow perform songs from ‘Little Fictions‘ at the Hammersmith Apollo last night confirmed the strength of the new album. ‘Magnificent’, in particular, lived up to…
My introduction to Elbow’s new LP, Little Fictions, has followed a familiar pattern to previous new output from one of my very favourite bands. On first…
Eugene Skeef and the Abantu Ensemble started an extraordinary performance at the British Museum last night with the sound of bird song. Not sampled sparrows, but…
It’s an odd thing in age where there’s an app or website for everything, but there doesn’t seem to be decent one-stop-shop London gig guide, or…
A friend’s older brother took us to see Gil Scott Heron in the back room of a Derby pub in about 1989. I loved his lyrics…
I’ve been going back to The Good the Bad and the Queen a lot over the last few days. A good friend of mine died over…
It’s time for the annual markontour tribute to the late, great John Peel’s Festive Fifty, championing the best new music of the year. As usual, there…
Wilco are in the business of joyful melancholy and their latest album is another great edition to the genre, making a perfect accompaniment for an over-travelled…
Bloody hell – what a terrible week. RIP Leonard Cohen. It’s going to be a day of sad songs, but something’s a bit more uplifting have a listen to this incredible interview between Jarvis Cocker and Leonard Cohen just a few weeks ago, in which he seemed so full of life and ideas. There is also a transcript.
When I say that swimming in the river, a talk about tree climbing, and dancing with mine and Ms markontour’s parents were the among the highlights of this year’s Port Eliot Festival, don’t think it wasn’t a vintage year for this little, eclectic Cornish festival. Almost everything we saw hit the spot. But for this big-city-hopper, you can’t beat combining great music with the lovely British outdoors, especially if your nearest and (wonderfully eccentric) dearest are in tow.
The British music festival season is in full so swing and so it is time for the first of many markontour reviews, starting with what remains the greatest of them all – Glastonbury. As usual the acts I saw will be scored based on what I scribbled down at the time and with a tendency to allocate extra stars to the new and unusual.
“I’m exactly the person I wanted to be” sang Amanda Palmer as she strummed a battered ukelele, prior to be joined on stage by her Dad, Jack Palmer. By the end of their incredible, powerful, and moving show at Le Poisson Rouge in New York this week, the audience as one was thinking “and what an extraordinary person Amanda Palmer has grown up to be”. Markontour is going to be in music-tip debt for quite some time to the two friends who took me to this incredible gig.
I have already used an excerpt from the sleeve notes to Woody Guthrie’s ‘Poor Boy’, but having just had the chance to experience at first hand what Woody was singing about when he reminded his compatriots that ‘This Land Is Your Land’, and because Guthrie’s words are so darn good, I have decided to reproduce the whole thing..
Record Store Day, the annual celebration of musical discs, has a big red star by it on the markontour calendar. So I bounced out of bed this morning and listened to Mary Anne Hobbs read out tweeted dispatches from the early morning queues outside Britain’s remaining vinyl emporiums, while compiling a wishlist of the special releases about to go on sale.
There’s nothing better than the right song at the right time and so it was for me flying back home over the Indian Ocean, listening to Frazey Ford’s reflective song of the same name. The lyrics suggest a sleepless night mulling over the enormity of the world, which well-suited markontour’s restless mind as we traversed the globe at 35,000 feet, the Indian Ocean an unknown quantity in the blackness below and Ford’s voice simply a reminder of beauty in the world. Sleep came as the track faded out to a gentle trumpet.
I thought I’d better do something Welsh for St David’s Day and what could be more Cymreig than an album of rugby songs? Released in 1968 by a presumably long-defunct record label, Sportsdisc, ‘The Welsh Sing Rugby Songs” was a gift from my wonderful cousin. According to Harry Morgan’s sleeve notes, the “intention all along has been to put on record Rugger songs exactly as they are sung by players the world over.”
I discovered Villagers in a church. Not a place markontour frequents or, indeed, expects to find enlightenment. But if religion is the opium of the people, then Villagers’ cover of Wichita Lineman is musical crack. Listen and remember why music is all the religion anyone needs.
Marc Riley’s heartfelt tribute to David Bowie on Monday night was incredibly powerful radio, and should be on the unmissable list for anyone fortunate enough to be in a country where you can access BBC i-player and listen again. The last half hour features archive recording of the equally lamented John Peel introducing a pre-Hunky Dory ‘Bowie and Friends’ concert in typical style, and is pure radio heaven.
A fellow punter at recent Lexington gig tweeted afterwards “I defy anyone to go to a Euros Childs gig and go home without a smile on their face”. That is generally true about any performance by the former Gorkys Zygotic Mynci frontman, but the back-in-love exuberance of Sweetheart means that this tour is likely to be particularly grin inducing.
Being a creature of habit, every year on our summer holiday I read a biography of a favourite band. It tends to drive my partner mad, because serial playing of their entire back catalogue accompanies the historical investigation. This year, I’m pleased to say, conflict was avoided, because while The Stone Roses: War and Peace was an engrossing read, the band only knocked out two albums, the first of which was of such sublime, epoch-defining quality that it is what the ‘Repeat All’ button was invented for.
Festival No.6 feels like it has come of age and turned out to be something its parents can be proud of. All the tickets sold out…
A festival that I come home from feeling stimulated but relaxed. We were first attracted by the Caught By The River stage, and that is still the main draw, but there is also a cracking roster of book talks, great poets and comedians, the best festival food you are ever going to eat, beautiful grounds to enjoy, the Idler Academy for some casual education, and a bracing swim in the estuary to set yourself up for the day.
My round-up of Latitude 2015. There won’t be any prizes for guessing that Wolf Alice turned in the most exciting performance of the festival, but an energetic Malian blues band, Songhoy Blues, ran them close.
Last night, thanks to Wolf Alice, I did something I haven’t done for a long time – sat down and listened to a new album all the way through, following the lyrics on the sleeve, and giving the songs my undivided attention. The much-missed DJ, John Peel, used to explain his undimmed enthusiasm for ploughing through the endless promo-tapes sent to him by hopeful aspiring bands with the thought that any one of them might just be the new Smiths. I don’t know if Wolf Alice are that, but I’m on my fifth listen in 24 hours..
Courtney Barnett won my musical heart last year with her witty tale of a horticulturally-induced asthma attack (Avant Gardener) and now she’s back with an equally punchy LP, ‘Sometimes I sit and think, sometimes I just sit’. Offering wry musings on moving to the suburbs, palmistry and new-found environmentalism, amidst jagged guitars and continuing references to breathing difficulties, this is an early contender for markontour’s album of the year – but for now it is Album of the Week.
In markontour’s view music is essential to life at all times, but it is especially in the dark hours of defeat and disappointment that a great tune really makes the difference. And so as I fly away from the prospect of another five years of deepening inequality and division back home, I have been searching for those songs that speak to my currently despondent mood, and might also start the process of renewed fight for a better future. Here follows my personal General Election Blues compilation, also available on Spotify.
Arriving at Brighton’s Concorde 2 from the Kemptown side, we were greeted by I Am Kloot* and friends warming up backstage, door open to the beach and singing their hearts out to Elton John’s ‘Your Song’. If that was a surprise, the ensuing gig was predictably brilliant. This is a band without a weak spot, aside from two thirds of the trio’s need to pop off mid-set for a fag.
‘The Fine Art of Hanging On’ is another treat from the band with a Bass beermat in their guitar sound hole. There seems to be lots…
Record Store Day, the celebration of music imprinted on vinyl in shops staffed by people who still make mix-tapes, heaven in another word, goes from strength to strength. The high street music retailers may have gone, but a hardy nucleus of independent traders continue to survive and, on at least one day a year, to thrive.
‘The Race for Space’ is a craker of a concept album, taking the listener through twelve years in the history of human space exploration from the first beeps of Sputnik to the Apollo 11 Moon landing.
As part of my attempt to catalogue all my music festival experiences, I am today trying to remember the first Glastonbury of the 21st century. John Peel was still the compere, the Park Stage did not yet exist, and neither did Shangri La. Doves were playing their debut album in the New Bands Tent. The Pyramid Stage, making a return for the first time since a previous incarnation burned down “in mysterious circumstances” before the 1994 festival, had been baptised by Robert Plant with a pail of milk from Michael Eavis’ herd. And hardly anyone had a tattoo.
Buenos Aires is beautiful city of green spaces and white, colonial buildings and, while I can only draw on a couple of days worth of evidence, it is clearly a place to have fun. Here follows the initial markontour guide, hopefully to be substantially updated at some point:
Half Man Half Biscuit’s ‘Urge for Offal’ is my Album of the Week #5. I have been addicted to the music of these lads from the Wirral peninsular since first hearing ‘Trumpton Riots’ on John Peel in about 1986. 2014’s offering, ‘Urge for Offal’, get’s all literary with ‘Baguette dilemma for the Booker Prize Guy’, but it would win my Album of the Week award on the strength of a single line in ‘This One’s For Now’: “Why does Mr Universe always come from Earth?”. Now there’s a question that has always bothered me. Aural joy.
When a drummer decides to give up the sticks to become a front man it is impossible not to groan and think of Phil Collins. But…
Having just had the pleasure of attending Rio Carnival 2015, I can confirm that it is indeed the greatest party on Earth, and quite possibly in the galaxy!
This week’s ‘Album of the Week’, Natalie Prass’ eponymously titled LP, is the latest release from the awesome Spacebomb record label. Founded by Matthew E. White…
“Scarecrow on a wooden cross / blackbird in the barn / Four hundred empty acres / that used to be my farm / I grew up…
‘Do It For Your Mum‘ is the biography of Britain’s most exciting and endlessly creative band, British Sea Power. Passionately and cheerily told by their amateur…
Thanks to my wonderful cousin, Lis (of ejengland-art.com), I have a picture frame that snugly fits and LP and, even better, levers open to allow regular…
The New Year is around the corner, Xmas holidays have begun for some and so it is time to reflect on the best music of the…
Wales, sunshine, swimming in the estuary on the set of ‘The Prisoner’ – why can’t it be Festival No.6 every weekend? 2013 Headline acts: London Grammar;…
RIP Acker Bilk. I revised for my GCSEs to my Dad’s Acker Bilk LPs, and while I may have failed French, I nevertheless learned that there…
“In 1792 John Evans, a 22 year old weaver from Waunfawr in the mountains of Snowdonia, Wales, responded to a plea from the great Welsh cultural…
Ah, Latitude again, for what is becoming an annual pilgramage with my lifetime best friends. The performances don’t really matter when you are with the your…
If 2013 was the year the Stones came to Glastonbury, then 2014 was the year that Dolly Parton charmed the world’s greatest music festival. Here follows…
Richard Sharland's new exhibition, 'What The Light Was Like', drew us to Manchester this weekend and made for a fantastic Friday night in the north west.…
“Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers, and they’ve been known to pick a song or two. Lord they get me off so much, they pick me…
It’s Festive Fifteen time again – my annual homage to John Peel and his annual round-up of the year’s best new music (the Festive Fifty). The…
Festival No.6 2013 was a rather unique festival experience, not least because rather than camping in a damp tent, we were comfortably ensconced in a guest…
Glastonbury is without doubt the highlight of every year. I love it unequivocally and never want to stop going. 2013 was quite simply ‘The Year of…
With a bit of luck (and application) this is the first in series of blogs that will attempt to catalogue some of the many wonderful festivals…
Shane Meadows' latest film, Made of Stone, is a eulogy to the Stone Roses advertised with the warning that it 'will make grown men cry', and…
Charlie Parr just became the lead member of an exclusive club: visitors to Britain who go home eulogising about the quality of our rail system. But…
Islington Assembly Hall, 29 May 2013 John Bramwell, lead singer and songwriter of I Am Kloot, delights in introducing almost any of his compositions with the…
I knew yesterday was going to be all about Ginger Baker, but a wonderful London Field Day also delivered the excitement of seeing Palma Violets at…
Shepherd's Bush Empire, 17 April 2013 I first stumbled across British Sea Power at the Reading Festival when on a 20 minute break from working behind…
British Sea Power provided the soundtrack to the weekend, with ‘Spring Has Sprung’ proving the perfect accompaniment to the first t-shirt-weather day of the year. It got its first play while I woke the off-road bikes from their winter slumber, and the joyous refrain “birdsong sings in the atmosphere; spring has sprung out of nothing” kept popping back into my head throughout the day as Liz and I followed the River Lea from our home in Walthamstow down to the Thames at Limehouse.
What a day Sunday was on Radio 6 (6Music if you must), but Jarvis Cocker stole the show with his two hour chat on music and nature with David Attenborough.
I’ve been in the Lake District this weekend to see Public Service Broadcasting, the band/art project that makes music to archive newsreels. Taking inspiration from founding…
Alongside generous hand-outs from native Americans, the first European settlers to cross the Atlantic largely survived off the plentiful supplies of oysters that lined the coast…
The Festive Fifteen is my annual Xmas homage to John Peel’s much missed longer and more eclectic list of the year’s best tunes. The only rule…
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