Dawes: When My Time Comes

I don't think I ever really wrote about the love affair I've had with the music of L.A. based band, Dawes. It started a while ago, after (quite rightly) searching out a few of Mumford and Son's' recommended listens... Dawes have supported Mumford previously, hence the connection, but little really came of this first chance encounter; a "Favourite" on my YouTube channel, but nothing more.

So when I was invited to review them supporting Mumford and Sons at the LG Arena, Birmingham in November, I genuinely thought it was fate. Writing in the magazine I'm Editor of, I said: "for a concert with just under 14,000 fans, their music and friendly chit chat between songs somehow managed to restore the intimacy and connections"... and went on to lust over the astonishing guitar solo they finished on during "When My Time Comes".

But really, the epiphany of our relationship came when Dawes took to the stage alongside the Mumford boys to sing "A Little Help from My Friends". The emotions in that huge, huge, echoing arena were incredible, and were even slightly juxtaposed by the comic falsetto backing singing...

I'd go so far as to say they're Los Angeles' 
equivalent of Mumford and Sons

After all this then, it's the least I can do to recommend them to you. They're a band who deserve a lot more recognition, and if they ever hit the UK again, make sure you snap up some tickets. You won't be disappointed - and you might even see me there!

How to Tie a Bow Tie

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, one of the most mesmerising and useful stop-motion films out there.

The Mynabirds: Body of Work

After looking through a long chain of blogs, I stumbled across another music blog (we may be far and few between, but we certainly are a passionate bunch!). Advance Copy's Kenyon Hopkin, who sounds to me to be some kind of radio disc jockey too, runs the place, and top of the page was Laura Burhenn (who toured alongside Bright Eyes)'s new* project - The Mynabirds. And what a great project it is too!

With echoes of Lykke Li in not only the song but the video too, I'm bopping around to it trying to hurriedly finish off the last few scraps of revision I've got to go. Exams are the worst but good music and lots of tea really does help!

*New-ish... starting in 2009, however the above single was released Nov 2012. Forgive me for being so slow on the uptake!

The End for HMV?

The golden age for HMV

His Masters Voice, a gem in the crown of the music market, has gone to the administrators. But with this, I'm struggling to really see why no-one has quite put their finger on the cause of death yet.

It may look like a simple "economic crisis" failure, another Woolworths (sob!), but I've always been a little worried for HMV. Shopping there, in recent years, has caused more of a grimace than a grin - the high prices sometimes took the shine off the excitement of buying new releases. Why not wait an extra three days and order it on Amazon instead?

This, combined with their inability to take to online sales (I questioned myself today, with wind of the news - "Do they even sell music online?"), has made them the Neanderthal in the face of Homo-Sapiens Amazon and iTunes. And like Everything Everything so rightly pointed out on the Channel 4 news tonight (please note my pleasant surprise at how well they did alongside Jon Snow), HMV spread itself too thinly across the market, branching out into films, games, tickets, merchandise, sound systems...

The one thing I'm desperately, desperately praying about now is the survival of Waterstones, a member of the HMV group. I don't know if I could handle another great british institution closing down, let alone a guardian of books.

The Great Gatsby

The buildings were higher, the parties were bigger; the morals were looser and the liquor was cheaper

Sorry folks for the recent lull in posting - it's been hard to keep up, especially with it being my exam period. So much work, so little time!

I hope you're all keeping well and looking out for the snow - it was lovely and thick last night, but it had all been washed away by the rain this morning. No crunching around in wellington boots for me! (At least, not yet... still crossing my fingers for another bout tonight!)

Tom (Buchanan!) Hardy 

As a small way of apologising for my absence, here is the trailer for what looks to be my film of the year (although, having said that, I do love finding little surprises along the way...). Leonardo Di Caprio and Carey Mulligan, in a film by Baz Luhrmann? What could be better! (Well, I have to admit that if they'd cast Tom Hardy as the raging Tom Buchanan, the film would be a perfect translation of my interpretation of the book, but I'll give Joel Edgerton a chance).

I'm going to say something almost sinful now too, but I don't even mind that Kanye West's No Church in The Wild is becoming The Great Gatsby's signature song... Roll on 17th May 2013!