Emily Barker & The Red Clay Halo - Calendar

Laura Marling fans who are waiting for her third album could pass that time very happily with this.

On the 31 January Emily Barker & the Red Clay Halo release their new single Calendar, taken from the groups new album Almanac which follows on the 7 February. The album is completely self-financed, with Emily having launched a campaign on Pledgemusic.com to raise funds for the release. The pledge reached its target within 5 weeks, showing that where there is a willing and loyal fan base people are still prepared to pay for music when they feel they have a personal attachment to it. Other bands currently looking for finance on the site include The Subways and Cornershop.

Calendar is the follow up single to Little Deaths, which received plenty of support from BBC 6 Music. “Will we draw a curtain across the sky and count down all our days?” sings Emily over an uplifting backing that draws on folk, roots and country musicianship before adding a more positive dimension “no, let’s sing us a song ‘til all the seas become calm.” Calendar sounds free, earthy and joyously organic – the perfect music for stepping out into the countryside, dancing in the sunlight and celebrating the planet - because the theme of this song is very much about the destruction of the earth and remembering what we can do to save it.

Emily Barker & the Red Clay Halo are touring the UK in February and visit Breaking More Waves home city of Portsmouth on the 11 February, with further dates in Leicester, Bournemouth, Exeter, Brighton, Norwich, Halifax, Manchester, Blackpool, Stockton, Glasgow, Leith, London, Cambridge and Nottingham. We’re a little gutted that the day of our home town show, we’re elsewhere watching another band we blogged earlier this month, such is the life of the hardest gig going blogger in Portsmouth, however we can console ourselves that they will also be in session with Cerys Matthews on BBC 6 Music on the 23rd January 2010 - a date for your diary.

Emily Barker & The Red Clay Halo - Calendar by Breaking More Waves