Lend Them Your Ears - 30/11/10 - Cosmo Jarvis

Delayed I'm afraid but it has turned up at last - it's this week's Lend Them Your Ears...

After a couple of Eastern European based weeks of Lend Them Your Ears, I bring you an English-American. An English-American called Cosmo Jarvis. Now, as well as a quite awesome name, Mr Jarvis has a whole host of amazing tunes up those sleeves of his. First and foremost is brilliant new single Gay Pirates, which is making a last minute burst to be my favourite song of 2010. It is certainly almost single-handedly making Jarvis' next album Is The World Strange or Am I? my most highly anticipated album of next year.

Now, Cosmo Jarvis has been around for a couple of years and has supported a number of big name acts such as Muse, The Holloways and Panic! At The Disco. His first release, the 2009 double album Humasyouhitch/Sonofabitch, undeservedly failed to chart but things are looking up for Cosmo's new material - a combination of a superb video for Gay Pirates (check it out below) and a supportive mention from the illustrious tweetmeister general, Stephen Fry have started to garner interest in the Devon-based singer-songwriter's new material.



But why? Well Gay Pirates is ridiculously sweet with a darkness running through it that can't fail to entertain. It also has a certain amount in common with the songs on Cosmo's debut album, in that it has a uniqueness that never feels like it is forced or purely for show. And then there's the stupidly catchy 'Yo Ho Sebastian' refrain. Oh and of course, everyone loves pirates! Those cheeky hook-handed, scurvy-ridden gang-rapists...

Another thing that I like very much about Cosmo Jarvis is that he is the generous soul - offering a veritable treasure chest of material to download for free. His website - www.cosmojarvis.com contains an acoustic version of Gay Pirates and one half of the debut album (the Sonofabitch half in fact) which are yours in exchange for an email address or Facebook 'Like'. And what a fair exchange that is I say.

So I think it should be obvious now why Cosmo Jarvis is this week's featured artist in Lend Them Your Ears - sweet, genuine songs, lots of free material and a sense of humour.

Find more at
cosmojarvis.com
myspace.com/cosmojarvis
twitter.com/cosmojarvis

He is doing a number of dates in the South West of England in December so, if you get the chance, please do go and see him, it will be ace!

We'll be right with you folks...

Hi everyone,

sorry for the late running of Sunday's Lend Them Your Ears post. It should be up tomorrow night. My apologies once again and I hope you had a good weekend!

C

3-4-FREE - 26/11/10

First off - an apology. I'm sorry this post is a couple of days late, I've been interning at 6Music (ooo get me, being all showbiz!) and commuting and so haven't had the time to put this week's 3-4-FREE together. Until now! Hurrah! And just for the next few weeks 3-4-FREE will be coming out on Thursdays. Lend Them Your Ears posts will remain the preserve of Sundays.

So here's this week's 3-4-FREE...

Allo Darlin' - My Heart is a Drummer
http://www.fortunapop.com/free_download.php?id=9

Allo Darlin' are one of the finest indie pop bands around at the moment - their self-titled debut album is one of my favourite albums of the year, they've been receiving plenty of national airplay and their live show is just wonderful. They make the sweetest music you're likely to hear without lapsing into a coma, driven by Elizabeth (also of Tender Trap) and her gorgeous, sparky vocal and chirpy uke playing. This bitter-sweet cut of twee-pop never fails to put a sad smile on my face and make my heart ache like it's been beaten. It's compulsive listening and available from Fortuna Pop as a 7 inch single or a free download, so get it NOW!

Grenouilles - Hawk on the Down EP
http://grenouilles1.bandcamp.com/

This Norwich 3-piece first caught my attention with their rather stunning cover of misogynistic r'n'b floor-filler Low by Flo Rida. That can be heard at their myspace - www.myspace.com/vivelagrenouille. At their Bandcamp page however you can find their moving, soaring Hawk on the Down EP. Now, acoustic-y folk has been done over and over and over in recent years but everything about these songs stands out - the quite incredible string sections, which make that special link between your heart and your spine quiver, the interplay of the melodic male and female vocals and the general sense of a gentle strength. So get all 5 tracks for free now and never look back...

The Boy Least Likely To - Happy Christmas Baby
http://www.theboyleastlikelyto.co.uk/

Yes, I know it's still November but it is an inescapable fact that Christmas is coming, and quickly. One of the best things about this particular Christmas is that the inimitable Boy Least Likely To are releasing their 3rd album (or 4th if you count their b-sides album). This fact has put a smile on my face so wide and permanent that I'm in serious risk of suffering lockjaw. The anti-folk-indie-pop-country duo are dedicating the whole album, which is released on 29th November, to the subject of the festive period. A couple of covers (Little Donkey and In The Bleak Midwinter) are mixed in with their original compositions, such as this track, Happy Christmas Baby. A cheery ode to pre-noon drunkenness, leaving it until Christmas eve to buy pressies and stealing marzipan from cakes, this song will make you smile like a cat who's getting the cream served to him by nubile kittens in silken outfits and being fanned with palm leaves...

There we go, see you on Sunday for another Lend Them Your Ears blog, Ta-ra!

Lend Them Your Ears - 21/11/10 - Elena Dana

It's Sunday so that means it's time for another Lend Them Your Ears. Ready? Then let's go...

Following last week's featured band, Estonians Tallinn Daggers Lend Them Your Ears retains an Eastern European feel with Ukranian singer-songwriter Elena Dana. STOP!! Don't run away at the sight of the 'singer-songwriter' tag. Elena is far more Emmy the Great and Laura Marling than Alanis Morissette or Nerina Pallot (remember her? You poor thing). Although originally from the Ukraine Elena now plies her trade in London, yet the influence of Eastern gypsy folk and jazz is palpable throughout her music - making it something quite different that immediately grabs your attention. The other thing that immediately makes you sit up and notice is Elena's wonderful, husky voice, which is utterly captivating.



Over the last couple of months Elena has enlisted the help of Mardi Williams and Mary Boeker to become Elena Dana and the Pirates who have been playing a number of gigs around London and are hopefully going to come out with new material. As for the material that exists from Elena as a solo artist, it is beautiful acoustic folk music with a Eastern European gypsy twist that showcases that sweet, husky voice of Elena's. She also puts on a wonderful live show - her nervousness and genuine love of the music she's playing combining with the captivating music itself to make a spectacle that is irresistible to any but the most hardened, cynical observer. Tracks such as My Life With You, Autumn Waltz and Scarlett Girl are instantly lovable and have a genuine warmth that you should let nurse you through the cold winter months ahead.

To find out more about Elena Dana, hear her music and to download her new track Sleza for free go to - www.myspace.com/elenazmuzika

You can also listen to her and buy her 2008 EP at www.last.fm/music/Elena+Dana

3-4-FREE - 16/11/10

Hello hello hello!

Welcome to this week's 3-4-FREE - a three song collection of the best free, legal downloads available on them there internets this week. So here we go, starting with...

The Savings and Loan - Pale Water - http://soundcloud.com/songbytoad/the-savings-and-loan-pale-water

First up is this delightful, melancholy bit of minimalist indie from Glaswegian act The Savings and Loan. As their record label, the fantastic Song By Toad, points out they very much channel aspects of Nick Cave, as well as The National and Leonard Cohen, in their music. Pale Water is a taster of their 9 track album 'Today I Need Light' which has been 6 years in the making and, if this song is anything to go by, it will be well worth the wait.


Crystal Castles feat. Robert Smith - Not In Love - http://soundcloud.com/slicingupeyeballs/crystal-castles-robert-smith-not-in-love

Next we have a record featuring a bona fide legend in music (and hairspray usage) - Robert Smith. His instantly recognisable vocal melds brilliantly with the much-improved electronic mish-mash that Crystal Castles bring to the table. This Platinum Blonde cover is due to be released as a single on December 6th on Fiction Records but you can have it now! For free!

Elliot Smith - Thirteen - http://rcrdlbl.com/2010/11/10/download_elliott_smith_thirteen

And finally, we have another cover. 7 years after he took his own life another collection of songs by Elliot Smith, including this gentle, heartbreaking re-imagining of Big Star's track from the 70s has been released. Entitled 'An Introduction To... Elliot Smith' the album has been getting great reviews (as any collection of Smith's work should really) and is a brilliant way to start acquainting yourself with his music.

That's it for this week, hope the continued presence of your ears have been validated for another 7 days!

Lend Them Your Ears - 15/11/10 - Tallinn Daggers

First off an apology - this article was supposed to be online yesterday but technical issues meant this didn't happen - sorry about that. And now on to the actual article -

If I were to compose a map showing where the bands in my music collection come from (which is maybe the basis of a different article for a different time) then the usual suspects would be heavily represented - Canada, the USA, Sweden and good ol' Blighty of course. One country that would most likely be lacking a champion amongst the more favoured nations is Estonia. Yet today's awesome band deserving of your attention comes from just there. Tallinn Daggers are an Estonian electro-wave band first brought to my attention by the Music Alliance Pact 2nd Birthday CD that was featured in last week's 3-4-FREE.



The band are a duo who make energetic, chaotic electro with shades of the likes of LCD Soundsystem and Karoshi Bros about it. Ardi Kivi and Joosep Volk formed Tallinn Daggers in 2009 and have put out several online singles since then, including latest offering 'Flesh Parade', which is a product of their own record label Love Forever. The stand out track from the band's short existence so far is definitely Island Phi Ley, a wonderful piece of electro goodness that encapsulates the feeling of a youthful summer fading (where you don't think about "sobriety" or "society") so perfectly it's a bit scary really. In the current musical climate where arty electro bands seem to be multiplying faster than rabbits on E, Tallinn Daggers have that mysterious element that makes them stand out - maybe it's the contrast of soaring synth and the raspy, almost threatening vocals or maybe it's their exotic origins but, whatever it is, they certainly deserve your attention. Now give it to them!

Find out more about Tallinn Daggers and enjoy their music at -

www.tallinndaggers.com   //   www.myspace.com/tallinndaggers   //   www.twitter.com/tallinndaggers

The Relaunch! - Free, Legal Music Within!

Right so, like many people on this here internet, I've been rubbish at maintaining my blog. Apologies for that. But from now on I'll do better. I promise, you have my word! So here's how it's going to go down (as those pesky kids say) -

Every Tuesday there will be 3-4-FREE where you'll be able to download 3 tracks that represent the cream of the free, legal downloads of that week.

Every Sunday I'll introduce you to a shiny new band that deserve your attention.

And every so often there will be a post on pretty much anything I feel like commenting on. Like the post just below this talking about Quentin Letts' article on the state of British comedy.

So I hope it all works out and you enjoy it :)

Here's today' 3-4-FREE. Since it's a relaunch I thought I'd provide you not with 3 tracks but 3 entire albums, oh yes siree!

First off is Sway's Delivery 2 mixtape.

Now, hip hop and grime are not the bread and butter of my musical diet. They're more like asparagus - I like to have it occasionally but it's not going to be on my plate all the time like good ol' bread and butter. That said Delivery 2: Lost In Transit is absolutely superb and is currently getting some bread and butter style playtime on my Ipod at the moment. Coming between the Delivery mixtape and Sway's album Deliverance, which is planned for 2011, Delivery 2 continues the fast paced flows and wide-ranged sampling of the first mixtape and cements Sway's place in the upper echelons of the UK grime scene. Top Track: Bring Me (feat. Klayz)

Next up is the debut album from half-Maltese, half-German indie-poppers Bark Bark Disco - Your Mum Says Hello!

A perfect example of sweet, lo-fi pop music made in a bedroom - catchy choruses, odd instruments and lashings of fun make this truly irresistible. The highlight is the Swedish pornstar-inspired Song For The Lovers (see the brilliant and almost, but not quite, NSFW video just here) which has a remarkable amount of charm for a song containing the line 'Sod the romance, let me get in your pants'. Top Track: Song For The Lovers

And finally on this week's 3-4-FREE - it's the Music Alliance Pact's Second Birthday album . The MAP is a group of music blogs from around the world including The Pop Cop from Scotland, Swedesplease in Sweden and America's I Guess I'm Floating. Each blog has put forward a track from its own country for this 35 song compilation. As you'd probably expect, it's a diverse mix, featuring an Israeli pschobilly cover of The Pixies' Mr Grieves, some Estonian electro-wave and even a bit of Indonesian death-rock. If you want a whirlwind world tour of current music this is definitely not to be missed. Top Track: Tallinn Daggers - Island Phi Ley.

Hope you enjoy this bumper, 67-song edition of 3-4-FREE and remember to check in on Sunday for details of your new favourite band.

Did You Hear the One About the Comedy Critic With No Sense of Humour or Valid Arguments?

Recently, in that perennially glass-half-full publication The Daily Mail, critic Quentin Letts used the death of Sir Norman Wisdom to call out current British comedy in its entirety. He described it as “smug, scornful and obsessed with sex and flatulence” before launching into an article using a few choice examples to illustrate how everything in British comedy since the Two Ronnies has been awful (with the possible exception of, quite unbelievably, Mr. Bean).

Now, please don’t get me wrong, I enjoy a lot of what the Two Ronnies and Letts’ other main example, Morecambe & Wise, did through their illustrious careers. But how can any kind of art or entertainment ever progress if it merely replicates what has gone before? Certainly, inspiration can be taken from British comedy of the past but just mindlessly copying it would lead us to a worse place than Mr Letts suggests we are in at the moment.

And now we are back to the author and the article that this blog entry is all about. There are numerous problems with what was written, firstly the idea that because Morecambe & Wise and the Two Ronnies were excellent and the 4 or 5 modern acts that are highlighted in the article aren’t (in Letts’ opinion) then old British comedy is better than the new. This is idiocy - as comedian Matt Kirshen observed on Twitter “I checked the first 3 albums I randomly saw in HMV and none of them were a patch on Revolver or Blood on the Tracks”. Morecambe & Wise and The Two Ronnies are remembered because they were the most popular and (arguably) best comedians of their time but there would have been many comedians around at the same time who were not very popular, not very original or just not very good who have been forgotten. It will be the same for this generation of British comedy – in 30 years time a few will be remembered but most will have been forgotten. Your guess is as good as mine as to which performers will fall into which category.

The pinnacle of modern British comedy, apparently.

Next is the bizarre assumption made in the article that all modern British comedy is the same (aside from the laudable slapstick of Mr. Bean of course). This is such utter toss that it makes my mind boggle somewhat and means I can only assume that Quentin Letts has not been paying much attention to today’s British comedy, aside from watching Mock the Week, the main target for his ire against contemporary comedy in this country. He mentions he attended this year’s Edinburgh Fringe festival, and even throws out the name of a performer he saw to prove it, but then dismisses all the comedy at this year’s fringe as “ok” at most, and more often than not “stale” and “predictable”. Whilst, given the huge number of acts performing at the Fringe, it can obviously not all be comedy gold a quick glance over the Foster Comedy Awards (previously the If.Com and Perrier Awards) shows a great deal of quality and variety.

Nominees for the main award included the lovably earnest Josie Long, the surreal Greg Davies and the buoyant yet self-deprecating Sarah Millican. The nominations for the newcomer award are even more diverse – sketch troupe The Late Night Gimp Fight, musical comedian Gareth Richards and the utterly charming silent comic The Boy with Tape on His Face. There is variety and laughter aplenty in the lists of nominees and they certainly don’t point to British comedy having been dead long before Sir Norman Wisdom was, as Letts asserts.

The Boy With Tape On His Face, proving Quentin Letts wrong by being brilliant

Letts also bemoans the fact that British comedy is not exporting so well any more, that we are lagging behind America on the global comedy stage. Personally I think, as is the case with pretty much every form of media, the internet is making national boundaries less and less relevant – people are finding comics they enjoy from all over the world that are linked by style rather than nationality. That British comedy as a whole is no longer widely recognised as the ‘market leader’ globally is not that important as plenty of British comics and comedies are still being enjoyed by fans all around the world.

So Quentin Letts, why don’t you cross the road? And fuck off.