Midlake might not be New to Q – but they are playing Wilton’s Music Hall

Midlake’s appearance in the New to Q Sessions has me puzzled.  For the most part, the monthly rock magazine’s line-up for five nights at the Tabernacle is strictly full of emerging talent: Delphic, I Blame Coco, Ellie Goulding and Marina & The Diamonds.  And then there’s the Texas fivepiece, around pretty much all the 2000s and well-known to many a discerning music fan.

No matter, though – though it can eventually be a bit too drowsy in large doses, Midlake’s forlorn, low-key indie-rock remains as pretty as ever.   This is real Americana, songs about simple lives and rural legends with a keen sense of place and real soul.  There are hints of Yeasayer’s first album in the melodic style, and generally an echo of old-fashioned rock sounds a la Fleetwood Mac, but really Midlake remain a separate breed.  Their early-career jazz fancies seem long behind them.

Tickets for the Tabernacle gig (Friday 28 January) have long sold out, as have ones for a Shepherd’s Bush Empire show in mid-February.  However, there are still spaces for a show at the vintage Wilton’s Music Hall in Whitechapel on Sunday 31 January, available here.

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MP3: Midlake – Head Home (M4A)

Pure Groove just gets cooler – Not So Silent Film Night

You’ve gotta love Pure Groove, haven’t you?  First it was a cool Smithfields record store.  Then it was a cooler record store that held free gigs by cool bands.  And now… now the world.  Speed dating nights to recent singles, mini-festivals, ale sessions, late licences… Pure Groove is less a record store nowadays than an independent music Shangri-La, a multi-function venue that single-handedly makes you think everything’s going to be okay.

I gush thus because one of the latest and greatest Pure Groove innovations is re-surfacing next week.  I speak of the Not So Silent Film Night, wherein a guest DJs provides an imaginary soundtrack to an old film played without its audio.  This tends to be creative – in Pure Groove’s words, “tense, eerie music in tense, eerie scenes, and full on sex rock in the naughty bits”.  Dancing, singing and screaming is encouraged, as is fancy dress.  If you’re wondering whether anyone actually watches the film, the answer is..  yes – but only sort of.  The night’s such a success it’s now sponspored by Last FM, no less.

The next Not So Silent Film Night is next Wednesday 13 January.  The DJs will be the Peanut Butter Jelly Time hip-hop crew and the film will be The Lost World.  Not Jurassic World part II, though, but the 1925 Conan Doyle novel adaptation, meaning definite scope for some fucked-up beats.   The night gets going at 7pm, with the film starting at 8 and the credits rolling at 11.  And it’s free as usual.  A fiver says T-Rex will feature at some point?

Feeling nostalgic already? A Best of 2009 mixtape to enjoy

If you missed any of last year’s highlights, here’s a pleasurable way to swot up.  Evidently still blessed with the Christmas spirit, producer Brian Curtis, aka Pandemonium Jones, has put together Splendid Moments 2009, a breathless mixtape of some of the 12 months’ best new sounds.  It’s available on zSHARE, either as a one long MP3 to download or stream, or a zip with breaks, and you’re looking at just under 100MB and 70 lovely minutes.  The track listing’s below, after this funny little 2009 summary video/tune:

Splendid Moments 2009
Atlas Sound – Shelia
Lotus Plaza – A Threaded Needle
Bear In Heaven – You Do You
Flaming Lips – Silver Trembling Hands
Neon Indian – Mind, Drips
Washed Out – Feel It All Around
Junior Boys – Parallel Lines
Animal Collective – My Girls
Delorean – Seasun
Memory Tapes – The Green Knight
Small Black – Despicable Dogs
Best Coast – Sun Was High (So Was I)
Boris – Black Original
Wavves – Vermin
A Sunny Day In Glasgow – Evil, With Evil, Against Evil
Volcano Choir – Still
Lucky Dragons – We Made Our Own Government
Banjo Or Freakout – Breath Out
Beach House – Norway
Mt. Eerie – Between Two Mysteries
Fourtet And Burial – Moth
Dan Deacon – Wet Wings
Kurt Vile – Beach On The Moon

Shona Foster – a girl who’ll phone you back?

Sometimes the density and variation of London’s music scene is so exhilarating I want to run and hug complete strangers in the street.  (It’s only because I live in Kings Cross, home to many a heroin addict, that such fantasies stay in my head.)  Shona Foster perfectly epitomises this depth: she’s absurdly talented, yet largely unkown.  Perhaps it’s because she’s a bit different, and inhabits the quirky, auteurish end of the spectrum: the part where dreamers hang out and girls phone you back.

She might only be a tall, elegant brunette of tender years, but Shona sings with the ache of a heartbroken, greying widow.  Using a velvet quilt of a voice, much of her repertoire involves tales of loss and life supported by a forlorn piano, and tender woodwind.  This is musical mulled-wine, infused with woodsmoke, warmth and wisdom.  But Shona can also do riotous rackets akin to showtunes from musicals – hooplas of relentless pace, an eclectic cast of instruments and thrilling theatricality – as well as bouncy, fiddle-backed numbers and murmurous, silky jazz.  I scarcely dare say it, but there’s a touch of the Florence in her determined creativity, and focus on melody.

Right now the places to see Shona are the capital’s more imaginative venues – like Passing Clouds in Dalston, on Thursday 8 April – as well as her native Brighton, but perhaps that’s no bad thing: these are the sorts of cosy corners where her charismatic songs will be all the more atmospheric and affecting.  And where you might meet a girl who’ll phone you back.

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