Admiral Fallow’s debut album Boots Met My Face was a wonderfully evocative piece of work that found favour with many critics and continues to worm its way onto the Breaking More Waves stereo. Yesterday marked the Scottish band’s return to the fold with a new single. Beetle In The Box is taken from the forthcoming album Tree Bursts In The Snow which is due 21stMay through Nettwerk. The album was recorded and mixed by Paul Savage at Glasgow’s Chem 19 (Mogwai, King Creosote) and mastered by Greg Calbi (Bon Iver, The National, Battles) at Sterling Sound New York.
We could listen to the warming vocal dialect of front man Louis all day; there’s something about his voice that just wraps you into the words he sings. Add to it the chugging guitars, female harmonies and folk rock tunefulness and Beetle In The Box provides a very solid start for the band's new material.
You’ll be able to hear songs from the new record throughout April and May as the band set off on a huge UK tour with plenty of Scottish shows, but alas for those in Breaking More Waves neck of the woods no south central Portsmouth / Brighton / Southampton date appears to have been scheduled. Sad faces all round on that one.
However the good news is that you can grab this single which we’re streaming below,for free, from the Admiral Fallow website. Use this link to get to the site and grab that download and check the tour dates. Admiral Fallow - Beetle In The Box
Leicester’s Summer Sundae festival may not be a big hitter in terms of giant artists, riotous audiences, high budget aesthetically pleasing artistic direction or a line-up devised to appeal to one particular demographic, but what it does do it does incredibly well.
Summer Sundae appeals because it is an incredibly convenient festival to attend. If you’ve ever slogged your way around Glastonbury, or fought with Reading’s lack of sleep campsite-culture then Summer Sundae will come as a very pleasant easy-on-the-body surprise. Set in a park in a city centre location it still manages to convey a sense of being out in the countryside, even if the second stage is the permanent De Montford Hall and a ten minute stroll will bring you to a Costa Coffee shop with Wetherspoons pub five minutes further. But this city centre location provides many bonuses, none more so than a compact and well-designed site, a second campsite just across the road from the main festival for those who want a quiet night of sleep and excellent transport links which include a big on site cycle park, a train station nearby and car park and on street car parking within five minutes of the entrance. Top this off with excellent management and organisation where stages run on time, friendly and helpful security staff and you have something that Leicester can be really proud of.
Here’s our run down of all the good, with hardly any bad.
Tickets
Early Bird 3 day tickets were £100 with full price tickets being £115. If you wanted to camp in the more spacious quiet Regents campsite there was an additional charge of £12 a person.
The Site
A tree lined park in Leicester.The main stage was set on a natural slope that gave excellent viewing opportunities whatever your height and included a Punch and Judy stall set to the left of the stage which housed a giant bird and a crocodile who appeared to occasionally mime along to the bands as they played. The second stage was indoors in the permanent De Montford Hall, which again gave excellent viewing opportunities with a seated balcony as well as the standing stalls area. Three other stages were more traditional tented festival venues (one of which was for comedy and spoken word). The smaller Musician stage could have benefitted from being a bit higher – those beyond the front rows had difficulty seeing anything on stage when the audience was standing. New for 2011 was the Victorian Bandstand Stage, whose PA was powered by enthusiastic cycling punters and featured oddities such as a penny farthing and bone-shaker display and talk by local cycling historian Roger Lovell and Harp For Hangovers – cover versions played with harp accompaniment. For those with children or for anyone that wanted to get away from the main areas The Garden provided kids entertainment, information stalls and the festival famous Mashed Tea Tent for all your non-alcoholic and cake needs.
The Punters
A varied mix of old, young and everyone in between, many of whom were local to the Leicester area, giving the event a relaxed and less full-on vibe than many other festivals.
The Toilets
The standard festival portaloos were well provided for, cleaned regularly and well located. However for those whose idea of any sort of non-permanent loo is a malicious nightmare, the De Montford Hall permanent toilets provided a welcome alternative.
The Weather
Generally cloudy with patches of sun. Friday saw a small smattering of rain but nothing of any consequence.
The Food
An excellent selection of festival favourites such as Pieminister, Simply Thai and Iechyd Da, with prices ranging between £ 5-7.50. The bars were run by Orange Tree Bars meaning that there was a huge range of real ales to sample as well as a number of cocktails. There was also the more standard range of lagers, ciders and spirits. Festival goers were also allowed to bring their own food and drink onto all parts of the site with no restrictions as long as it was for their own personal consumption, although we understand that next year these rules may change and there may be limits on what you can bring in.
The Music
Summer Sundae is sometimes too heavily judged on its often very average and inconsistent headliners and to a certain extent this year was no different with The Maccabees, Newton Faulkner and McFly topping the bill. The Maccabees may be a decent mid-level indie band, but with a large stage and PA to fill the bands surprisingly subdued performance found them lacking a little, with Orlando’s voice not being strong enough to give the songs weight and their choice of lots of new tunes testing the patience of anything but the most hardcore of fans. However where Summer Sundae wins hands down is with the other cards in the pack, bringing a whole host of new, diverse and talented musicians to the stage on the lower reaches of the bill.
Friday saw the debut UK performance of Other Lives, whose audience size was helped by a momentary rain shower outside the Rising Stage tent, their subtle yet majestic blend of orchestral folk and rock stirring the soul with its note perfect warm execution. More natural beauty was on display just a short while later when Admiral Fallow’s songs lifted spirits even further – with poetic tenderness that felt like your best friend. Yet it wasn’t all organic singer-songwriter traditionalism. For those of a sturdy constitution the intense pummelling electronics of Factory Floor (streaming below) were a ride to the future ghost (g)rave of Giorgio Moroder. Hard hitting, hypnotic and droning the three-piece managed to scare off a number of the small crowd who watched them play, but those who remained were challenged with repetitive beats and stabs that made some sort of glorious noise. On the main stage early on Saturday evening Bellowhead got bums off the grass and feet dancing with their brassy burlesque folk music that gave easy justification to a claim by the Independent that they were the best live act in the country. And as the festival began to wind down on the final night and McFly entertained the screaming girls who had camped out against the barrier all day to see their heroes, Kitty Daisy & Lewis brought a magically nostalgic take on old fashioned 50’s rock n roll, flavoured with ska, disco and the blues to a jiving and smiling crowd.
The Conclusion
Summer Sundae is one of the most under-rated festivals in the UK. Forget about the headliners and enjoy everything else it has to offer.
To say that the line-up of bands for the second day of The Great Escape is possibly the best in the events history is no exaggeration. The list of must see acts is so overflowing that the deluge is akin to a waterfall. Be warned, you will suffer from the dreaded line-up clash syndrome today. Amongst the bands playing you will find many artists that we’ve featured previously on Breaking More Waves, including Rachel Sermanni, The Staves, Idiot Glee, Kyla La Grange, Creep, Delta Maid, Teeth, Chad Valley, Still Corners, Visions Of Trees, James Vincent McMorrow, Treeflight For Sunlight, Various Cruelties, Breton, Polarsets, Cloud Control, Charli XCX and more. Picking five as recommendations is near impossible, but choose we must, so here we go with four acts that we’ve written about before and one newbie.
Admiral Fallow - Green Door Store 14.45, Fortune of War 19.00 and Above Audio 21.00
You have three chances to catch Scottish folk rock band Admiral Fallow on the Friday in Brighton. Failure to attend at least one of these shows will find you standing in the corner with a dunce’s hat on your head. With evocative songs from their immaculately produced album Boots Met My Face, Admiral Fallow capture the hearts of many who hear them. If you’re going to Great Escape maybe it will be your turn next?
Imagine Maxi Jazz from Faithless sleepily rapping over d-i-y laptop beats and electronic flows that have the essence of Massive Attack in their vibe and you’ll be getting close to the sounds of Ghostpoet aka Obaro Ejimiwe. We’ve already suggested that Ghostpoet could be a potential Mercury prize nominee for his downtempo treasure of an LP Peanut Butter Blues and Melancholy Jam and Great Escape gives you a chance to see why. Call us old fashioned, but it’s so nice to hear a rapper who doesn’t have to resort to swearing all the time to get his message across and his tracks get quickly under the skin without the need for foul language.
Ed continues to confuse people with his mix of folk, rapping, soul and realness of a classic singer songwriter. One moment he’s collaborating with grime artists like Devlin and Wiley, the next he’s covering Jamie Woon with just an acoustic guitar and loop pedal on Later With Jools. This pick and mix approach sits uncomfortably with those who like their music filed in neat categorised boxes. Yet many people are tapping into what Sheeran does. He is growing a huge live following, his gigs are selling out wherever he plays and with his first major label album, simply titled ‘+’ due for release later this year, his name could become very well-known indeed.
Let’s Buy Happiness – Prince Albert 21.15 (Also playing on Saturday at Queens Hotel 14.30)
Cast your mind back to our preview of Great Escape last year and you’ll find the name Let’s Buy Happiness as one of our recommendations. Unfortunately on that occasion the band didn’t quite live up to our expectations but since then we’ve seen them play a number of live shows and they get better and better each time. Beautiful ethereal and tremulous female vocals, complex guitar work and drums that thwack perfectly, this year we have every confidence that Let’s Buy Happiness will wow Brighton.
Our final recommendation for Friday is the only band we haven’t featured on the blog before. Walk The Moon play energetic hooky indie rock / pop and in their song Anna Sun have a tune that sounds suspiciously like The Killers. They may not be bundled up with pounds full of originality, but with a late night show booked for Great Escape we can easily imagine this bands good-time sounding tunes scoring high with the masses – maybe Great Escape is the time to take a stroll with them ?
The secret ingredient in much great new music is time. Not every music blog can be first past the post with every artist in the world. Sometimes things have to slowly develop and grow organically.
Here’s a band that in terms of our listening experience have done just that. They are relatively new to us although they originally formed in 2007 under the name Brother Louis Collective. They have already released an album entitled Boots Met My Face in 2010 in Scotland and are now gearing up to give the record a full UK re-release in March 2011. There’s a very good chance that this release will gain this band - Admiral Fallow - a whole new army of fans.
A six piece consisting of Louis Abbott, Sarah Hayes, Joe Rattray, Kevin Brolly, Philip Hague and Craig Grant, the bands rousing, evocative tunes mix guitars, flute, clarinet, strings and double bass to create indie folk rock songs that stand head and shoulders above many of the peer group. In fact we’d go as far to say that they are quite possibly our new favourite band. Take one listen to Subbuteo below, where lead singer Louis’ voice gently narrates the song through “bangers in the wheely bins, lazer pens shone through the glass” and missing “rain on the roof, pit stop paths and whistling streams,” until the whole thing explodes in a fanfare of trumpets and crashing drums and you’ll see why. The other track we’re streaming is Delivered – a sweet narrative about the end of life. “Cameras in your blood stream and heartbeats from your batteries and limited reserve,” sings Louis with his restrained warm Scots accent until an almost prog rock ending shows that the band have bags full of variety in their repertoire.
Listen to Admiral Fallow below, and if you’re not touched then check your pulse because you’re probably dead.
The band will release a new single Squealing Pigs in March, followed by the album. They also play SXSW festival in Austin, Texas. Both of the tracks streaming below can be downloaded for free from the Admiral Fallow bandcamp. These songs are why music is such a wonderful thing.
