Though in truth his music doesn't totally hit this blog's spot, there's plenty engaging about Tom Brosseau's vaguely distracted, generous personality live in performance. And even more so when it's augmented, as at the Windmill in Brixton last Thursday, by empathetic assists from no less than Shelley Short, native member of fertile Portland alt-folk scene on her first UK.
Sharing a kind of artless, timeless aesthetic, the pair's all-too-brief set conjured a transporting back-porch reverie (even if the spell was shattered the instant rr stepped out the door to encounter a blaring police BMW ripping past the venue to the latest crack den atrocity or some such).

Read more about Shelley here. This blog totally loved her handmade limited edition debut five years back [go] but was not anticipating taking receipt of the on-order new one (A cave, a canoo - hear/buy) this side of Christmas thanks to the UK postal lack-of-service. My explanation really wasn't a blatant hustle for a freebie, Shelley, but thank you again...
[shelley short][tom brosseau][anikainlondon was there too]

Shelley is an original Portlander(??) but the scene's magnetic pull for girls with guitars has attracted another long-time reallyrather favourite Haley Bonar, recently relocated from the mid-west. How on earth her super-accessible last album Big star wasn't more widely picked up on is just another of life's baffling mysteries (see also: Gravenhurst's The Western lands, matt pond PA's Emblems and, er, most other albums favoured hereabouts). Surely its only a matter of time before she's signed up by..Nettwerk? Anyway, just before she hitched up her wagon and headed west she did a turn down at the zoo (as you do):

Meanwhile, back at the Windmill, earlier on the bill were the very taking melodies (if slightly gauche lyrics) of Iceland's Lovísa Elísabet Sigrúnardóttir aka Lay Low. When the lap steel accompaniest kicked in the sound approached the airy, lovelorn luminosity of Sweden's long-and-lamentably lost Laurel Music [here hear]:

[lay low]

In any line-up of reallyrather's imaginary festival there's usually a place for The Tyde, LA's proto-surf slackers who can hardly seem to muster a tour of the West Coast let alone Europe. So we must grateful for what we can get, which is Darren Rademaker solo, opening for The Shaky Hands at The Lexington Nov 5...

...and also next month a UK debut for Florida's '60s orch-pop classicists The Postmarks...