Best album poll: It’s the Schmercuries 2011

September 5, 2011, 5:46 am

≫ Next: Playlist | Schmercuries 2011

For Folk's Sake Schmercury Awards 2011

On the eve of the Mercury poll, FFS have put together a list of our 12 favourite folk-tinged albums of the past year for our very own Schmercury prize.

We’re going to do things a little differently this year, and we’ll be awarding TWO prizes. The Readers’ Choice, for the album YOU vote for and the Editors’ award, which Reviews editor Ian Parker, Live Editor Helen True, New Bands Editor Alice Sage and I will slug it out over.

Our previous Schmercury Prize winners are…

2009 The Leisure Society – The Sleeper
2010 Cocos Lovers – Johannes (Editors Picks: Broadcast 2000 – Broadcast 2000; Anais Mitchell – Hadestown)

And here are folks that might join them…

The Leisure Society – Into the Murky Water Stream on Spotify | Deezer | FFS review
Emmy the Great - Virtue Stream on Spotify | FFS review
Mechanical Bride - Living with Ants Stream on Spotify | FFS review
Dark Dark Dark – Wild Go Stream on Spotify | FFS review
Wye Oak – Civillian Listen on Myspace | FFS review
Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues Stream on Spotify | FFS review
The Low Anthem - Smart Flesh Stream on Spotify | FFS review
Rachael Dadd - Bite the Mountain Listen on Myspace | FFS review
Middle Brother – Middle Brother Listen on Myspace | FFS review
The Secret Sisters – The Secret Sisters Stream on Spotify | FFS review
This is the Kit – Wriggle Out The Restless Stream on Spotify | FFS review
Devon Sproule – I Love You, Go Easy Listen on Myspace | FFS review

Voting opens later today and there’ll be 2 weeks to vote for your album of the year. But in the meantime, give the list a listen. We can’t recommend these records highly enough.

UPDATE VOTE NOW!

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Playlist | Schmercuries 2011

September 8, 2011, 5:53 am

≫ Next: News | The Low Anthem announce hiatus

≪ Previous: Best album poll: It’s the Schmercuries 2011

We know that deciding to listen to vast swathes of brilliant music can be difficult, so we thought we’d be nice and put all our Schmercury nominees for 2011 into a playlist for you.

We’d been rather banking on all 12 of the magnificent albums being available in one place but they’re not, so you need to prepare yourself to click about the internet more than once.

Eight of our nominees are available on Spotify, so you can listen to albums from The Leisure Society, Emmy the Great, Mechanical Bride, Dark Dark Dark, Fleet Foxes, The Low Anthem, The Secret Sisters and This is the Kit in one continuous stream of goodness, here:

FFS Schmercuries 2011 – Longlist

Now, be brave. We must urge you to seek out songs from the remaining nominees by marginally more difficult means.

Listen to songs from Rachael Dadd’s album here.
Head here for a bit of Wye Oak.
Enjoy Devon Sproule here.
Middle Brother can be heard here.

The best solution, if you’re a person of means, is to buy them all, then take two days off work to listen to them. That’s certainly what we’d do.

Not voted on the poll yet? You can do so here.

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News | The Low Anthem announce hiatus

September 8, 2011, 8:52 am

≫ Next: Win! | 2 tickets to see The Low Anthem at London’s Roundhouse tomorrow

≪ Previous: Playlist | Schmercuries 2011

The Low Anthem sent this message to their mailing list subscribers today…

Dear conspirators, lovers, friends,

It was nearly 3 years ago when we first self-released “Oh My God, Charlie Darwin.” Since then we’ve been pretty lucky. We’ve been signed to two of the finest record labels known to man, toured the globe with world class musicians, and been allowed (paid even) to play hundreds of shows to you. It’s a life we could only have dreamt. From the beginning, we’ve been a local music outfit, nearly oblivious to the avalanche of trending watery bullshit known as indie music.

All along, we’ve just wanted to play. Music that was simple. Music that we connected to. With the same spirit we started with as a duo in bars and open mics. We were obsessed with sound and gave ourselves a mission. We’ve been working to perfect our craft, the palette of instruments, rhythm-breath, harmonic saturation, a certain style of writing…mournful, drunk, angrily obsessed with justice, yadda yadda.

After 451 shows, we feel we’ve come pretty close to answering our own question. We know the “Darwin / Smart Flesh” material inside and out – better than a prominent birthmark…like swimming in bathwater…It’s really dialed in. Maybe some artists reach this point and become safer more refined imitations of themselves. We’re not interested.

So…we’ve decided that this upcoming tour will be the last tour of the chapter. The last tour devoted to this material, this incarnation. A final hurrah. A sweet goodbye. The refined completion of three years of work. It’s anything you want it to be, but it will be the last for a while.

It’s not the end. There is no end. But it’s the last one for a while. We have too many unfulfilled ideas in the works to stay out on the road. We’ve got 40+ new songs in the wings. Two very different albums to record. Blueprints for a handful of electro-light sculptures. But it’s going to take some time back home, to turn the page and build a new sound world. To burn the furniture. To decipher the new questions. So with all our hearts and all our thanks, we hereby declare in the words of Nathan Moore, this fall 2011 tour in US and Europe…

This is the last one
The last one ever°
This is the last one
We swear it
This is the last one
How dare it
Keep on giving ’til the end

Here’s the updated tour below. We’ll see you out there.
Love love love,
yours,
~Low Anthem

°that’s how the song goes

The band will be playing in Leeds on November 14 and in London on November 16th. More news as we have it.

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Win! | 2 tickets to see The Low Anthem at London’s Roundhouse tomorrow

November 15, 2011, 6:28 am

≫ Next: News | Emmy The Great, Lucy Rose added to Truck Festival line-up

≪ Previous: News | The Low Anthem announce hiatus

Remember when the Low Anthem said they were calling it a day? Well they’re not! They’ve decided that it would be much better to release a beautiful limitied edition 10″ of Smart Flesh (Extras) and play a show at the Roundhouse.

You can preorder the record from Rough Trade. The record include 3 outtakes from the Smart Flesh recording sessions and “To Ohio,” recorded with Emmylou Harris. It will be released on November 25th.

Smart Flesh (Extras)

Side A

1. Roses in a Mist v.1 (working title)

2. Old Cedar Tree

Side B

1. Roses in a Mist v.2 (working title)

2. To Ohio (For and with Emmylou Harris)

Tickets to see The Low Anthem at the Camden Roundhouse on 16th November are available here.

We’ve got a pair of tickets to the show and a Smart Flesh 10″ to give away to one lucky reader.

Just email comp [at] forfolkssake [dot] com including your full name and address and with the subject “Low Anthem” to be in with a chance of winning.

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News | Emmy The Great, Lucy Rose added to Truck Festival line-up

April 26, 2012, 10:56 am

≫ Next: Album | The Chieftains – Voice of Ages

≪ Previous: Win! | 2 tickets to see The Low Anthem at London’s Roundhouse tomorrow

Emmy The Great has been added to the line-up for the Truck Festival, which will already feature The Temper Trap, Mystery Jets, Villagers, and The Low Anthem among many others.

Emmy, who played at Hill Farm in 2008 and 2006, is one of a number of late additions to the line-up that have caught FFS’s eye, with Lucy Rose, Michele Stodart and Kill It Kid the others.

Truck Festival 2012 takes place on July 20th & 21st at Hill Farm, Steventon in Oxfordside.

To see the full line-up, and get details on tickets – which will cost £69 inc camping for the weekend – visit www.truckfestival.com.

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Album | The Chieftains – Voice of Ages

May 30, 2012, 1:52 am

≫ Next: Interview | Introducing… Inti Rowland

≪ Previous: News | Emmy The Great, Lucy Rose added to Truck Festival line-up

When marriages have lasted 50 years, it is traditional to receive presents of gold. For Irish trad-folkies the Chieftains, that particularly anniversary has brought a variety of even more glittering gifts. Keep your Rolex watches and charming carriage clocks. Bin the broaches. Give me guest slots from Bon Iver, Lisa Hannigan, The Civil Wars, The Decemberists et al.

That such a special career landmark should be celebrated by collaboration might be unusual, were it not for the fact that many of the band?s most transcendent moments have come in the company of others -? not least their high watermark alongside Van Morrison, ‘Irish Heartbeat’.

Of course, anybody with an natural aversion to celtic reels and the collected sound of bodhrans, fiddles and whistles need explore no further. The featured artists here are not intended to drag the main protagonists into new areas,? instead they are paying very sincere homage to the Chieftains and their trademark sound.

Hannigan and The Low Anthem get two of the better known standards – the former fitting like a glove alongside the slow burr of ‘My Lagan Love’ and the latter offering a restrained take on Ewan MacColl’s ‘Schools Days Over’.

‘Down In the Willow Garden’ confirms what many have suspected for some time – that Bon Iver?s Justin Vernon is perhaps the most versatile and recognisable voice of recent years. Stick him in a deserted cabin with a broken heart, give him a studio full of effects or, if you’re James Blake, auto-tune the hell out of him. Regardless of the context, he never gives less than an emotionally resonant performance and he does so again here against a backdrop of gentle strums and winsome violin.

On ‘Pretty Little Girl’ and ‘The Frost is All Over’ the Chieftains unleash their more raucous, up-tempo side, with the Carolina Chocolate Drops and the Punch Brothers coming along for the ride.

There are other engaging cameos along the way, while the 11-minute jam of The Chieftains Reunion showcases the musical chops that brought so many collaborators to the table in the first place.

Words: Rory Dollard

Tracklist:

1. Carolina Rua – Imelda May
2. Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies – Pistol Annies
3. Pretty Little Girl – Carolina Chocolate Drops
4. Down in the Willow Garden – Bon Iver
5. Lily Love – The Civil Wars
6. The Lark in the Clean Air / Olam Punch – Punch Brothers
7. My Lagan Love – Lisa Hannigan
8. When the Ship Comes In – The Decemeberists
9. School Days Over – The Low Anthem
10. The Frost is All Over – Punch Brothers
11. Peggy Gordon – The Secret Sisters
12. Hard Times Come Again No More – Paolo Nutini
13. The Chieftains Reunion
14. The Chieftains in Orbit with Nasa Astronaut – Candy Coleman
15. Lundu – Carlos Nunez

Listen online:

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Interview | Introducing… Inti Rowland

January 25, 2013, 3:54 am

≫ Next: News | Low Anthem announce return

≪ Previous: Album | The Chieftains – Voice of Ages

Init Rowland Inti Rowland is a 20 year-old singer-songwriter, currently writing and gigging in London. When FFS first heard Inti’s delicate voice, we knew instantly he had captured something unusual and very compelling. His lofty voice floats above gentle melodies, making one feel as though they should be residing on a cloud somewhere sunny. FFS managed to chat to Inti about what he’s been up to and some of his plans for the future… it really is splendid stuff.

Hello, please introduce yourself and your music to the uninitiated.

Hello, my names Inti Rowland, I’m 20 and live and work in London, singing and writing songs of pleasure and shame, stories and dreams.

Tell us a bit about your last/lastest single?

On the 31st of January I’m releasing the second in a series of live church gig e.p’s, titled ‘Live At St.Pancras Old Church’, myself and my ever growing band have been headlining some churches around London and recording the gigs.

What was your best ever gig?

Played a lovely acoustic show in the chapel behind the Gallery Cafe in honor of Christmas with the whole band, it was packed and pin droppingly silent, a truly lovely audience! Comparable only with a first ever headline show at St.Marys in Stoke Newington.

What’s the worst thing about being a musician?

Erm, well, I don’t know, I suppose I’ve never really thought about that. Perhaps, that people don’t give you free pieces of expensive cheese and gigs, I mean surely it’s come to light that money means nothing when cheese in fact aids one to see in the dark, or is that carrots? Well, either way, more cheese would be good.

What inspires you?

People inspire me, people who work tirelessly throughout their lives for the people they love.

If you won a billion pounds what would you do with it?

Build an ancient indian palace or an ice garden or maybe open a keep sake shop like the one out of bagpuss.

Out of your songs: which is your favorite?

Strange, I think it’s always hard to say with your own work I’m good at worbolling on about why other peoples songs are great, but its harder with your own. I’m very pleased with Summer Swallows which is a new one, yet to be featured on any records. I was away on a writing course in Shropshire, staying in the eerie old English house and hadn’t spoken to anyone properly in days, the whole thing just came together beautifully, I’ve never felt that i’d managed to get down exactly what i’d felt in such an honest way.

What are your plans for the future?

Well, I’m planning to do one more big full band headline church show, before I head into the studio in the early summer with the band to record a my debut L.P, we’re going to do about 13 songs, got lots of plans for arrangements and concepts most of it’s written but got a bit further to go yet, spend a lot of my time looking for a suitable location, I’m thinking a old factory, swimming pool or a tree house or maybe a castle.

Finally, we’re always looking to expand our musical horizons. Do you have any recommendations of bands or artists we should be looking out for?

I’ve been playing a lot live in London, alongside some great other bands, such as Patch and The Giant, Rue Royal, I think Josienne Clarke and Ben Walker are really great. I also love The Low Anthem, The Staves, Glen Hansard and Lisa Hannigan to name a few.

If you like the sound of all of that, make sure you check out Init’s music, and see here for more information, see here. For now, a personal favourite of mine: ‘Eyes of a Starling’.

Words: Ellie Rumbold

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News | Low Anthem announce return

June 20, 2013, 10:58 am

≫ Next: #207 Futur Primitif – Time

≪ Previous: Interview | Introducing… Inti Rowland

The Low Anthem have emerged from their hiatus to announce a new record, upcoming shows and a line-up change.

The Rhode Island folksters announced back in September 2011 they were to take a break and have been away from the limelight for a year since their subsequent tour.

In a lengthy message to fans sent by email today, the Oh My God, Charlie Darwin artists revealed they were working on new material – or as they put it “a surrealist folk-noir schemescape fairytale of kidnapping and housefire”.

They wrote: “A new work is underway! We are recording a surrealist folk-noir schemescape fairytale of kidnapping and housefire, mothered by moths, curling from apothecary bottles of cut diamond to emerge: a museic installation mixing poetry, narrative, and psychedelic light.

“We’ve been taking sound-gathering trips to zoos, beaches, skateparks. We’ve been out to California with our butterfly nets. We’ve been shading ourselves to sleep under a starshine of semitones and scouring every tonal corner of the great theatre. All to gather its rich ingredients. We don’t know yet how it’s coming out, this bouncing body of a recording. But, as we reach summer solstice, we’ve been planning our sacrifices to the gods, prepping and scheming. A horde of umpaloompas waits eagerly in the boiler basement.”

The new music will hit be completed without Jocie Adams, with the singer and multi-instrumentalist having gone solo.

“We bid farewell to our friend, and musical cohort Jocie Adams, who has started a new solo project called Arc Iris which is awesome. Check it out! She has made beautiful new recordings with lots of friends and love. Our warmest wishes go toward her muse and where it leads her.”

The band also gave further details about how they had spent the last year, renovating a theatre in Rhode Island.

“As you may know, we have spent the last year residing in the Columbus Theatre, a derelict operahouse, turned pornhouse, turned achingly beautiful crumbling, forgotten mess on Providence’s west end,” they wrote. “It started out as a haunted playground of a place to set up our recording equipment for a new body of work (more on that in a minute!), and soon became that and more.

“With the help of our friends Bryan Minto, Tom Weyman and Lauren Faria we formed the Columbus Co-op and began the irresistible task of re-opening this dinosaur landmark. A year later, thanks to the outpouring of community spirit and hard work of many volunteers this idea has become a surreality. The theatre meets is on its feet again bringing loads of shows and films to Providence.”

Finally, they gave details of three upcoming shows in Brooklyn and Rhode Island, which can be found here.

Phew. Welcome back, Low Anthem!

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#207 Futur Primitif – Time

September 26, 2013, 8:17 am

≫ Next: Album | Arc Iris – Arc Iris

≪ Previous: News | Low Anthem announce return

Futur Primitif, the current project of former Low Anthem member Daniel Lefkowitz, are back with a third single from their celebrated album Machineteeth. ‘Time’ will instantly appeal to fans of his former band and should steer any of them who, like me, missed the album when it first appeared earlier this year. The treats don’t stop here, however, as the band have also put out this video of Lefkowitz covering Dylan’s ‘Like a Rolling Stone’ with the Barr Brothers at End of the Road.

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Album | Arc Iris – Arc Iris

April 1, 2014, 1:37 am

≫ Next: #620 Arc Iris – Kaleidoscope

≪ Previous: #207 Futur Primitif – Time

Former Low Anthem front-woman and ex-NASA researcher Jocie Adams has returned in typically unorthodox style with her first record in her shiny new group Arc Iris.

While hearing Adams’ voice out front might take a little getting used to, little else about this record will before you feel right at home. The songs change in style and mood continuously throughout, almost like they’re all fighting for creative output and forgetting to stick to a theme. This is in no way a bad thing. It’s nice to be kept on your toes and the whole 11-track record seems diverse and experimental. From the upbeat pop vocal “Doo-Wops” and 60’s keyboard of ‘Ditch’ to the delicate piano and sombreness of ‘Canadian Cowboy’, to the swing-trumpet in ‘Singing So Sweetly’, the album is most definitely worth several repeat listens.

Thankfully, Arc Iris’ line up is as diverse as their sound and features a very prominent trumpet player (Mike Irwin), who adds a real melancholic ambiance in all the right places. The cello (Robin Ryczek) and bass (Max Johnson) intertwine through many of the songs, and fold perfectly within the other instruments. The mixture of styles that have come together to make this record is mind-bogglingly expansive. Cabaret-folk, Klezmer, swing, and country all battle for attention. As soon as you’ve gotten used to one song, it’s squeezed up against another, of a different tempo and style altogether.

Arc Iris have come in strong with an eclectic record, which may take a few listens to get into, but promises to be an investment that you’ll be glad you took the time to make. With a sound somewhere between Regina Spektor and Dark Dark Dark, T-Rex and Sinatra, this isn’t a record for anyone seeking a more of a straightforward approach to folk. But it’s worth a listen, if only for the sheer heterogeneity of the sound.

Words: Joseph Merriman

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#620 Arc Iris – Kaleidoscope

June 3, 2016, 2:30 am

≪ Previous: Album | Arc Iris – Arc Iris

‘Kaleidoscope’ is taken from Moon Saloon, the new album which has just been announced by Arc Iris, due for release via Bella Union on August 19. The Providence three-piece have promised a darker edge to the follow-up to their 2014 self-titled debut, and the sinister undertones to this track certainly give credence to their claims. “The album is meant to be cathartic,” said lead singer Jocie Adams (formerly of The Low Anthem who, incidentally, are also due to return soon after a long, long lay-off). “There’s an imbalance in everyone’s lives. When there’s often so much going on, we yearn for simplicity.”