Will Hanson CD Review: Folking Cool

With songs about serial killers and creepy crawlies Will Hanson’s debut album Hope On Top is a rather ghoulish affair. A heady cocktail of romance, horror and sci-fi sound effects, listening to this record is like stepping on to the set of a 1950s B movie.

Hanson, who used to front London-based indie band Proxy, mixes traditional elements of folk with infectious, foot-tapping pop. Born in Paris, he honed his musical talents performing in coffee shops around Glasgow.

Hope On Top is a beautiful yet sinister album which flits between lush baroque arrangements, delicate acoustic guitar and eerie background music. The track Girlfriend Materials sees Hanson take on the role of a murderer who attempts to create the perfect woman by killing strippers for their body parts. Once his task is complete he names her “Phoebe”. Yikes.

Whilst on tour Hanson regularly appears on stage backed by a full string quartet. This unique part of his live performance can also be heard on this record, which is heavily layered with musical saws, glockenspiels and harmonicas.

Hanson is a wonderful songwriter; his haunting lyrics capture your imagination and conjure up gothic images reminiscent of scenes from classic American horror movies. The record’s opening track Watching You Fade is a particularly atmospheric song which sees Hanson bellow “So wrap me up in fairy lights and throw me to the moths!” as he recalls a bitter breakup with his sweetheart.

It’s tricky to pigeonhole Will Hanson or compare him to anyone else. His ethereal and passionate music stretches a number of genres including folk, indie, country and pop. Based between Glasgow, London and New York, Hanson is still a relatively underground performer but with a successful UK and US tour under his belt, it’s only a matter of time before even more music fans roll up for a Will Hanson fright night.

Kate Wash CD Review: Folking Cool

“Argh nooo, not ANOTHER female singer-songwriter moaning about men!” I hear you cry. But fear not, shush your grumbles and give Kate Walsh a go. You’ll soon realise that she’s far superior to any of the girlies presently taking over the UK charts.

Kate Walsh is bloody good and the proof is in the pudding. Back in 2007 this Brighton-based lady knocked super-group Take That off the top of the download charts with her debut album Tim’s House. This year sees the release of Kate’s third record Light and Dark.

Light and Dark is a brazenly morose album centred upon Walsh’s tempestuous love life. A romantic at heart, Walsh has confessed that she enjoys wallowing in failed romances: “Yes my heart is on my sleeve all the time. I mope more than anyone else”. But it’s not all self-pitying doom and gloom. Kate’s dark lyrics are a striking contrast to her breathy melodious vocals which have earned her comparisons to Joni Mitchell and Regina Spektor.

The lyrics to the album’s title track are refreshingly honest and full of raw emotion as Kate recalls a messy love affair involving two men. A sensitive soul, Walsh cried on stage whilst performing the track at London’s Union Chapel as she sang, “When I think of how you held me, like I was the one and only. I wish that I could love you, like I ought to, like I wanted to”.

Released on Blueberry Pie, Light and Dark is packed with lush productions and gentle guitar riffs. Fans of Turin Brakes will most likely have already heard Kate’s songs The Greatest Love and Light and Dark which both feature guest vocals from Brakes frontman Olly Knight. His involvement with the record will hopefully help Kate Walsh to achieve the mainstream recognition which she deserves. Not that she cares what you think…she’s adamant that she is uninterested in fame.

Light and Dark is a highly personal album. Listening to Walsh’s heart-rending lyrics is like poring over her personal diary extracts. However, her tales of messy breakups and love triangles are something of which we can all relate. It’s the perfect album to have a sniffle and drown your sorrows to.

Sam Baker CD Review: Folking Cool

Imagine sitting around a campfire next to Johnny Cash and Steve Earle on a balmy summer’s evening. Add to that a pair of cowboy boots, a bottle of moonshine and some gold ol’ thigh-slapping country blues and you have Texan singer songwriter Sam Baker.

Cotton is the 55 year old’s third album and the follow up to 2007’s Pretty World.

The record is a hotchpotch of tales against a backdrop of elegant and understated piano and guitar arrangements. Baker plays out the lives of a whole host of characters, including a Mexican metal worker who swaps praying for partying. (“He bought a pale snap shirt stitched with horses and stars. A handsome pair of boots, started driving past bars. Where women wore short skirts they made out in cars. Drank beer by the quart out of mason jars”.)

Although tracks such as Mennonite are the perfect accompaniment to a good knees-up, Cotton is not your stereotypical country twang. In 1986 whilst travelling through Peru, Baker found himself at the centre of a terrorist attack. When the train he had boarded was blown up, seven people died, leaving Baker deaf and brain-damaged with a mangled hand and leg.

Baker’s three albums have been presented as a trilogy, Cotton being the third instalment. His records have charted his recovery as he explores the fragility of life. Whereas the first album Mercy saw him attempt to come to terms with his experiences, Cotton depicts love and lifes blows through poignant and melancholy lyrics alongside delightful harmonies.

Even though Cotton is tinged with sadness, Baker’s poetic lyrics and delicate instrumentals leave you feeling uplifted. Who’s Gonna Be Your Man sees singer Roxie Dean duet with Baker. Her sweet, flowery vocals are a charming contrast to Baker’s raw expression as he asks her “Who’s going to kiss your red ruby lips?”

Cotton might depict a life stained with heartache and tragedy but the album is a joy to hear. The guitarist’s blend of blues, Americana and folk is country music at its best as well as great introduction to Baker’s life and work.

Alessi's Ark Interview: Folking Cool

Jenni Stalmach is charmed.

Chatting to Alessi’s Ark is like a little ray of sunshine on a dull day. “I’m not like anyone else,” chuckles Alessi Laurant-Marc as we natter about the release of her debut album Notes From The Treehouse. And after speaking to the teenage songbird I can’t help but agree.

Alessi Laurant-Marc, who’s just turned 19, is part of the capital’s flourishing nu-folk movement and the London-born teen has quickly caught the eye of the UK folk scene with her honeyed, indie-rock, fairy tales.

She happily chats to me about her new album and enthuses about the final product. “I’m so, so happy with how the album turned out,” she says, “There are special things that I love about every song but I must say I’m supremely pleased with The Dog. I’ve had chance to work with so many special people on the record.”

Despite Alessi being a fresh addition to the bundle of acoustic songsters touring the UK, she has already had the chance to record with one of her musical heroes on her debut. Notes From The Treehouse sees Alessi collaborate with producer and Bright Eyes guitarist Mike Mogis, much to her surprise.

“When I signed with EMI they said ‘who would be your dream guy?’ and I said Mike Mogis, but I didn’t know what my chances were. At the time he was on tour with Bright Eyes in London so the timing was more than amazing. I got to meet up with him and I liked him straight away, he’s a warm guy. He managed to find a block of time towards the end of that summer to start recording. I was extremely lucky; in fact I couldn’t believe it!”

After their initial meeting in London, Alessi travelled to Omaha in the summer of 2007 to start recording the album with Mogis. The result is a breathtaking brew of sugary sweet melodies laced with harps and hushed vocals.

“At the time of recording I was just 17,” she explains, “I was a minor so my mum came with me to Omaha. We set up camp there but came back and forth for my dad’s birthday and things like that. The whole process was maybe about half a year.” She adds, “Nebraska is such a great place you should definitely visit.”

As Notes From the Treehouse gently trickles from your speakers you are invited into Alessi’s dream world. Her psychedelic lullabies tell tales of enchanted creatures, freckles and space. However her lyrics are not as twee and innocent as they first appear. Although the majority of her tracks remain untarnished by the outside world, songs such as Over The Hill depict heartache and melancholy, surprising subject matters from someone so young.

“I’m definitely not old enough to have experienced a worldly amount of things so some of my lyrics I completely make up,” she says, “At times though I do base my songs on my own experiences and things that have happened to friends and family.”

A homebody at heart, Alessi’s not your typical teenager. She confesses, “I don’t really go out that much maybe I should! I go out to see bands sometimes but I spend a lot of time with my family. We go out to eat or to the cinema. I like to go for walks I don’t really go out clubbing to be honest.”

Softly spoken, witty and engaging Alessi is eager to chat about her favourite bands, her artwork as well as her friends and family.

“Mainly I listen to guys,” she says, “I do like some women but I mostly listen to men. I like Graham Nash and Neil Young and I like some really early T-Rex. My dad, he likes The Jam, Paul Weller and all these mod bands. Whereas my mum really loves David Bowie. She introduced me to things like Crosby, Stills and Nash.”

After completing her GCSEs Alessi left school to pursue her music career. Her parents granted her permission to continue with her music under the condition that something happened within a year. She explains how her parents’ continued support is the key to her success:

“I did my GCSEs and we agreed that afterwards they would just let me play,” she explains, “They said if nothing comes about you will have to go back and that seemed more than a cool enough deal. I was daunted by not having any kind of routine though because at school you’ve got homework, timetables and revision I just thought
‘argh I don’t know what I’m doing!’ You can go through waves of having a definite plan of the week and other times I’m just pottering around. She says enthusiastically “My parents have been amazing and I know that this is all down to their support”.

Whilst at school Alessi began creating a fanzine entitled The Brain Bulletin which she packed with music and film reviews and illustrations.

“I started writing The Brain Bulletin when I was 14 and I did it for a few years,” she explains, “I used to make up names so if anyone ever picked one up they thought that more people were involved in it,” she giggles. “I started drawing in it and writing about films and books and slowly people started to submit.” She adds, “I now try to do a digital version of the fanzine but it’s not tangible. I prefer to have things that are handmade.”

DIY culture is something which the young folkstrel is extremely passionate about, so much so that this month she launched her own exhibition of line drawings at Riverside Studios in London.

“The exhibition is curated by a friend of mine,” Alessi explains. “She puts on events in a secretive way under the name The Velvet Sneaker. The theme is handmade. They’re all black and white line drawings that have been collected over time. The oldest one in the exhibition is one that I drew for The Brain Bulletin.”

Alessi feels her art and music are connected: “A lot of the drawings that are up in the exhibition came to me whilst I was thinking about songs. I’ve incorporated lyrics into quite a few of them. I do think there’s a definite kind of theme that gels between the two. There’s an owl with me tucked up in the wing, I drew that with my Nana in mind and there’s my interpretation of what the ark looks like from the inside. A lot of the drawings I did whilst on tour and posted them out to people that were joining the mailing list. They are quite special prints, I like the fact that they are just roaming
around in the world.”

Alessi’s Ark has just come back off an extensive UK tour to promote the release of her album. She speaks fondly of her time in Middlesbrough, which was her favourite gig of the tour.

“I’ve played in a few strange places but they’ve always been fun,” she says, “I played in a bookshop in Long Beach, California once which was really cool. It was a really nice place to hang out. This week I’m playing at a bird hide in Stoke Newington as well. This really cool organisation called Hunger Munger are trying to protect and restore the reservoir there by raising money.”

Despite her originality Alessi finds it difficult to brush off comparisons to the likes of Laura Marling. “Our music is pretty different we get pigeon-holed together because we are of a similar age, we don’t live far from each other each and we both play the guitar and sing. She’s a nice girl but she does do something different to me. Everyone loves to say that you’re doing something like someone else”. When asked to give her opinion on the lashings of ladies currently occupying the UK charts, Alessi remains the epitome of all things lovely and keeps schtum. “I don’t think it’s fair to judge! I haven’t gone out of my way to give any of them a listen so I’m going to sit on the fence.”

So far Notes From the Treehouse has met with a glowing reviews. Over the next year Alessi hopes to travel with her music, serenading her mushrooming fanbase with folk fairy stories. “My mum is half French so I would like to play there, perhaps in a nice café. I want to keep on playing and working on different incarnations of the ark”.

Mundy Interview: Folking Cool

Jenni Stalmach talks comebacks, busking and Shane MacGowan with Irish singer-songwriter Mundy.

“I’ve always believed that my songs were good enough to get to number one,” declares Mundy as he recounts the success of his third album Raining Down Arrows. Released in 2004, the record reached number one in the Irish album charts and achieved platinum status in the singer songwriter’s home country. This year has seen the release of Strawberry Blood, the long-awaited follow-up to his best-seller.

Strawberry Blood has been described as Mundy’s most accomplished disc to date and is his first record to get worldwide release since his debut Jelly Legs. “This album is a lot more poppy than my last records,” he says, “The songs are very strong lyrically and musically. I definitely get more back from Strawberry Blood than I do with Jelly Legs.”

Mundy – whose real name is Edmund Enright – started his music career as a busker on Dublin’s Grafton Street. Influenced by Tom Waits, Dylan, REM and the Pixies, he honed his musical talents by performing at open-mic nights in the city centre. “I was only about 18 or 19 when I started busking,” he says, “I was able to meet so many different people. We all used to get together and go to this singer-songwriters bar called The International to perform”.

It was at The International where Mundy met his manager Dave O’Grady and began to establish his recording career. “I met Dave through Hazel O’Connor,” he explains, “gave him a demo and very quickly he got a lot of positive responses from publishing companies. It was there that everything started”.

Mundy is huge in his native Ireland and his debut single To You I Bestow was featured on the soundtrack for Baz Lurhman’s blockbuster Romeo and Juliet. Despite his early success, Mundy was dropped from major label Sony shortly after the release of his debut album. “I was gutted because I felt that I was really starting to take shape,” he says, “When I got dropped another 40 or 50 bands did too. The record label was doing kind of a spring clean. I was told that singer-songwriters weren’t sellable at the time”.

After being dropped by Sony Mundy contemplated giving up his music career for good but decided against the idea because “You always write songs about giving up”. Mundy’s response to Sony was to set up his own independent label Camcor Recordings.

“At first I thought how do I do this on my own? How do I run a business when I have absolutely no experience?” he says, “I was skint by this point but it doesn’t cost a lot of money to register a record name. To finance the label I went on the road and saved the money. I built up my confidence slowly but surely and I realised that there were a lot of people in Ireland that hadn’t seen me play that really wanted to”.

Mundy is perhaps best-known for his collaboration with Sharon Shannon on the Steve Earle track Galway Girl. The song was Ireland’s most downloaded track of 2007 and 2008. The pair were introduced to each other by Luka Bloom after a Sinead O’Connor concert. “I invited Sharon as a special guest to play Galway Girl with me when we were recording my DVD Live and Confusion,” says Mundy. “All of a sudden people started ringing into radio stations asking them to play it. It was never released as a single but it became a bit of a phenomenon on its own. It was one of those lucky freak accidents”.

On Strawberry Blood Mundy has again collaborated with a number of big-name acts. On his favorite track Love is a Casino, he teams up with fellow Irishman and hell-raiser Shane MacGowan. “Shane was great to work with. He’s completely unique; I’ve never met anybody like him. Years ago when the song was a demo, I thought, ‘I can definitely hear Shane MacGowan in this song’, It kind of had a Johnny Cash feel to it,” he laughs, “So I rang him up and went over to his house, we stayed up drinking all night and he agreed to come in and record the track the next day”.

Asked who he would like to collaborate with in the future Mundy replies, “There are millions. Nick Cave would be one, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, I love Wilco as well, Flaming Lips, Bonnie Prince Billy, there’s so many people out there”.

This summer Mundy will be busy promoting his new album with a number of tour dates across the globe: “I’m going to be in the UK and New York in September and then Australia in October. I’m all over Ireland at the moment, I’m playing a big festival here called the Electric Picnic, I’ve got a good slot at that.”

Last summer Mundy made his debut appearance at Glastonbury both as a performer and a festival-goer. “I don’t know why I’m not playing Glastonbury this year perhaps it’s because I didn’t have the album out in time. I hope that I will be doing it next year. Glastonbury blew my mind; it was great because I was a Glastonbury virgin”.

The Sunday World described Mundy’s new album as being “a tonic for difficult times”. Whilst many artists have taken to singing about politics and current affairs Mundy has avoided these topics and created an uplifting and lighthearted album. “A lot of my heroes wrote about the war or current affairs but I just find it too obvious to write about stuff like that,” he says, “I like to write what’s in my own tiny little mind rather than in the papers. I try to avoid what’s corny and obvious but people don’t enjoy clever stuff. I’m always fighting against that maybe I should try to embrace it”.

Recognition for my degree project: Huddersfield Examiner

I was very pleased to read that journalist Denis Kilcommons wrote an article about my dissertation project in his Huddersfield Examiner columm! :)

STUDENT Jenni Stalmach produced a unique piece of work for her degree at Huddersfield University – a fanzine devoted to the town’s reggae history.

Jenni (pictured) researched the changing scene from the 1960s when the only club in town for that type of music was Venn Street in the town centre.

Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Venn Street was a popular haunt for Huddersfield’s reggae fans, famed in the local community for its impressive history of dances and live acts.

Originally the Empress Ballroom, Venn Street, opened as The West Indian Social Club in 1967. The venue changed names over the years and became Cleopatra’s in the 1970s and Silver Sands in the 1980s.

For many, Venn Street was THE place to hear reggae music at the weekend. Playing host to reggae superstars such as Gregory Isaacs and Dennis Brown, Venn Street was also popular as it was the only bar in Huddersfield to open into the early hours of Saturday night.

Situated in the town centre where Kingsgate Shopping Centre now lies, the old stone building was nothing special to look at, scruffy and run down with palm trees and Jamaican imagery adorning the walls. Scruffy on the outside it may have been, but the music played inside made the club a legend.

Stephen Dorril went there as a 17-year-old in 1974.

"It was strange because there was always little applause for excellent bands,’’ he said. "Everyone was just ultra-cool and just stood there. When I saw Aswad at Venn Street it was an odd experience because they were brilliant, but nobody clapped until the encore."

The club was eventually demolished to make way for a car park in 1992 but the memories – they linger on.

Reggae Hit The Town! Dissertation project

For my disseration I made my own fanzine detailing the history of reggae in Huddersfield. The fanzine features reggae culture in the town centre dating back to the 1960's to present. 30 pages of photographs, interviews, reviews and flyers plus fabulous art work by Robert Walker. Roots & culture from Venn Street, Huddersfield Poly, Axis Soundsystem & more!
*Grab a copy from Wall of Sound Records in Huddersfield or Jumbo Records in Leeds...only £2! or follow the link below to order the fanzine online!*