One minute you're up...

..the next you're sitting in the road slightly battered and bruised, staring ahead at a formerly oh-so-pretty scooter... Which has meant music-ing has been off the agenda for a while, nagging pain and general pissedoffness not being the best state in which to fairly crit new sounds. So there's a bit of a backlog which reallyrather may or may not get round to...

The night before The Incident (actually quite trivial in the scheme of things) this blog was able to catch Language of Flowers' first gig in half-a-year at an AC30 night at The Windmill. When she was eventually located (about 5 mins after the rest of the band had taken the stage) LoF's singer Tara Simpson, dressed demurely in black lace skirt & cardie, looked like she'd come hot-foot from a wake. Smiley in a nervous kind of way she lead the band gamely as the guys behind conscientiously applied themselves to the jangletastic task at hand. At one point strapping on a big cherry red electric for her sole guitar duty of the night - just strumming the chord of A throughout Songs about you - she, er, forgot once or twice. But it was for the best of reasons, being slightly taken aback as the song's refrain was throatily taken up by the crowd. "Woo..best audience we've ever had," she said, a remark which would've sounded like routine audience-stroking coming from anyone else. But Tara's genuine, her unaffected sweet self and we believe her. Which is partly what makes the bittersweet break-up saga that is last year's debut, Songs about you, such a joy. And that's still really all they've got in their locker and they played everything (except Christmas) to the letter and note. They gave us Summer's gone for an encore even tho' "we haven't rehearsed this one". And it sounded just great - it's overrated, that rehearsing malarky...
Language of Flowers / Songs about you

Fans of endearingly wonky alt-folk-popsters The Mendoza Line will want to give serious consideration to The view from here, the debut release from Slow Dazzle. Why? Coz Slow Dazzle is ML's Shannon McArdle and Timothy Bracy, that's why. It's out now on Misra...
Slow Dazzle / on Misra

Back in January this blog mused idly on the prospect of The Magic Numbers lifting the Nationwide Mercury Music Prize this year. A nomination for sure - but winners?, nah was my conclusion. Hmmm. Slightly wishing now that I'd tried to get someone to quote me odds back then. Not that the record's the five-star masterpiece as aclaimed by Mojo, the Indy on Sunday, et al but it's got stacks of the right credentials to scoop the prize.
reallyrather's never had the experience before of knowing a band's songs so well before ever getting to hear them on record. Familiarity hasn't bred contempt, far from it, but a little disappointment here and ther. This is due mostly to the 'smallness' and politeness of the sound particularly at key points - and most of these songs revolve around key points - the moments where, in a live situation, the crowd all joins in. In private, when everybody's out, reallyrather tries to make up the, er, numbers but it ain't quite the same. Still, there's a belting little collection of pop songs on there; drop This love, Wheels on fire and Try and you've got a great little record. The Mercury nominations are July 19...

...and though it's developed into something of 'best newcomer' award, there's usually the odd veteran named as much for their body of work as their latest effort. And sometimes they actually win (see PJ Harvey). Morrissey's the obvious candidate of this type this year; New Order would've been another if they' tried a bit harder. But Saint Etienne might just sneak in with Tales from Turnpike House (even tho' David Essex does his best to spoil it). This album has been easing reallyrather back into listening mode and has, in turn, led backwards to - naturally enough - Ivy's Apartment life and that Postal Service record...

..which has meant still no space for Sufjan! 'A staggering collection of unspeakably precious music..his masterpiece so far,' said the NME this week. This blog hasn't heard but it believes. Oh, you gotta have faith...