The Great Escape 2012 - Preview (Part 3)

This is our third preview post on Brighton’s Great Escape 2012 which takes place between 10th-12th May. Today we turn our attention towards Saturday’s activities and three further recommendations for bands to see. With the likes of We Are Scientists, Africa Express Sound System and Madeon occupying some of the bigger venues, there’s also plenty of interest at the smaller shows, particularly during the day. 

Of particular note is the recent addition of ex X-Factor star Aiden Grimshaw on Saturday. It will be interesting to see what the turnout for this gig is, with day tickets for Saturday having already sold out and the Great Escape not particularly being an event that people who stay in on Saturday night and watch X-Factor are likely to attend. However there’s a possibility that there may be a sizeable crowd of curious types, given his recent positioning in fairly hip magazines, hype machine chart placing and the fact that he never really fitted in as a typical X-Factor star anyway. If you’re going to his show please let us know on twitter what you thought afterwards.

So here are three acts that are highlighted on the Breaking More Waves schedule. Our previous two posts have presented the artists music via Soundcloud streams. Today we're going visual and doing it via You Tube.

Emily & The Woods 15.15 The Hydrant

The Hydrant may be geographically somewhat out of town compared with other venues at the Great Escape but there’s a fantastic afternoon of music promised for those enjoy sounds of a more acoustic bent and make the trip to this Alt. Escape show. In fact it’s worth taking residency all afternoon to catch the likes of Karima Francis, Stealing Sheep, Like Spinning and an artist that Breaking More Waves adores – Emily and The Woods. Emily’s acoustic songs have a calmness and inner beauty to them which if you’re feeling a bit battered after your first two days could offer a gentle oasis for you to shelter in. Lovely stuff.

Emily And The Woods - Never Play (Video)

Shields 22.30 Sticky Mikes Frog Bar

Sticky Mikes Frog Bar may not be the best of venues with its low ceiling and stage making viewing for pretty much anyone but the first few rows difficult, but it may be worth the effort for Newcastle’s Shields. Indie tunes that canter along with riffs designed to dance to will be the order of the day here. When we first posted their single All I Know in March the track zipped into the Hype Machine charts quite simply because it was a catchy song that buzzed for all the right reasons. A band with promise.

Shields - All I Know (Video)

The Milk 01.15 Coalition

There’s plenty of late night shows at Great Escape but this one has to be our choice. Quite simply The Milk are one of the best new bands we’ve seen play live in some time. Euphoric tunes, arse tightening vocals, grooves, old school r ‘n’ b and northern soul flavours all mixed into one continuous no-gaps-for-applause stream The Milk will leave you feeling breathless, happy and utterly in love with music. With Jinja Safari and Slow Club on the bill as well it promises to be fine way to finish off Great Escape. See you there?

The Milk - Broke Up The Family (Video)

Emily & The Woods - It Was Right There ( Watch Listen Tell Video)

Ah Emily & The Woods. The sweet sounds of Emily & The Woods. We could quite easily listen to nothing else until the day we die.

OK, this is probably a case of marginal over-exaggeration, because as much affection as we have for the music of Emily & The Woods you really can have too much of a good thing- the appetite will eventually sicken and die. However, since posting the video of Steal His Heart in April last year on the blog it’s clocked up over half a million views on You Tube so certainly somebody shares our hungry love. We’re all getting fat on a diet of Emily.

So for those who share the appreciation, here’s a new video recently filmed for Watch Listen Tell. The song is called It Was Right There and was shot adjacent the River Thames. And yes, just for completeness there are some woods in the background. And a man walking a dog. We’re not sure if the man or his dog are meant to be there, but if Lana Del Rey can have a man and tigers in her video why can’t Emily have a man and a dog. It makes a lot of sense.

So here it is, Emily & The Woods & A Man & A Dog. The full ensemble. They're all right there.

Emily & The Woods - It Was Right There

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Emily and the Woods - Handwriting

We’re starting the week with something insanely beautiful.

When compiling the Breaking More Waves Ones to Watch for 2012, in order to provide comparison to the BBC Sound Of and Blog Sound Of 2012 longlists we limited the number of artists chosen to 15. Amongst those that just missed out from our list was the seraphic Emily & The Woods.

Recently Emily has uploaded an extra track to her Soundcloud account. Handwriting is not a new song, having first appeared on her EP Eye to Eye last year, however its new online presence gives those who are already enamored with her sound the opportunity to spread the word further.

A truly intoxicating voice, there are some comparisons with two other Breaking More Waves favourites who made our list; Rachel Sermanni and Lucy Rose, both of whom we featured new material from last week. Besides the obvious fact that all three are female, sing and play guitar another important distinction is that each artist is slowly building a fan base through the traditional routes of demonstrating their talents by releasing EP’s and playing well received live shows.

If you aren’t familiar with Emily & The Woods or have yet to hear Handwriting, now is as good a time as any to get involved and possibly become a little bit smitten.

Emily and the Woods - Handwriting

Emily & The Woods - Eye To Eye

An article by Scott Creney on Collapse Board the other day gave a thought provoking rant on music criticism and music journalism, its fundamental point being that much music criticism has lost its way. “You don’t need someone to tell you what this music sounds like. You don’t need someone to tell you where it comes from. And you damn sure don’t need someone to tell you whether or not it’s any good,” Creney argues – in the fast moving world of today we can click on a button, press play and use our own intelligence to decide if something moves us or not. A musical encyclopaedia is not required to determine or teach you feelings.

To a certain extent we agree with what Creney says, although with some reservations. Read on.

We’d agree that there are too many writers out there at the moment producing verbal wordy diarrhoea describing how the music sounds and its reference points; it has become writing churned out from the factory school of sameness. These pieces of journalism often become rather dull to read and smack of an author trying to score points about his / her vast musical knowledge, even although the reality is they are probably just trying to help their readers get a feel for the music. However, sometimes, as a one of the comments on the Collapse Board article from someone called Charlotte suggests “I actually like to read articles that describe the music – its quicker to read a review than listen to a whole album, and some text telling me about what I might hear is useful.”

So, here’s our view. It’s about balance. The best modern writing not only informs but entertains and excites. Sure, any monkey with a thesaurus and a bit of time on their hands can sit and dream up elaborate prose that actually says very little; something that could have been said in a sentence. Websites like Pitchfork have a lot to answer for in their influence of modern journalism / criticism both professional and amateur, and we're not certain it's all for the best.

So we come to Emily and the Woods. Her music is acoustic folk, although sometimes it has a jazzy tinge to it as well. A reference would be Laura Marling. That is all you really need to know. Now press play.

What is important is how music makes us feel. So let’s explain. If the music of Emily and the Woods were a real living breathing thing (and it’s not far off) we would marry it instantly and probably spend the rest of our time trying to make babies. This is a feeling called L.O.V.E. There’s something about her work that creates spine-tingling sensations. This is beauty. It gets you inside. This is why we adore music. Why don’t you fall head over heels for it too?

Eye to Eye is the title track from Emily’s new EP. We have previously featured the video for another song from the EP Steal His Heart. Emily plays the acoustic stage at Glastonbury this weekend. You can buy the EP here.

Eye To Eye by Emily and The Woods

Emily & The Woods - New Waves

During our recent coverage of the 2011 Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition we mentioned one particular act that during the live final in Pilton mesmerised us with her hypnotically beautiful folk music. And although we use the term ‘folk’ there are greater depths to what Emily of Emily and the Woods does. There’s a smouldering seductive jazz tinge to some of her songs, a hint of the blues and in her performance there’s a bucket load of confidence mixed up with just a touch of endearing quirkiness. We pretty much fell in love with her music that night, correction, we did fall in love with her music that night, and we promised you that we would be posting on her again at some point.

We’ve been holding back for that moment until today, when Emily’s new video for her song Steal His Heart, the second song on her new EP Eye To Eye is released. Keeping the music very much a family affair the song features Patrick and Benedict Wood (her father and brother) on musical duties together with Ted Dwane (Mumford & Sons) on double bass and drummer Roy Dodds (Fairground Attraction, Eddi Reader). Steal His Heart is more uplifting than some of her sadder acoustic work, an example of which - I Can’t – a song released in memory of her friend who died – also streams below.

The video is a chase between a postman and Emily from London to Brighton beach.

To celebrate the release of the EP on May 4th Emily & The Woods are having a launch party at The North London Tavern, Kilburn High Road, London. If you can make it prepare to feel goosebumps.

I Can't by Emily and The Woods

Glastonbury Emerging Talent Competition 2011 -The Shortlist

Monday saw the announcement of the Glastonbury Festival Emerging Talent Competition Shortlist. The long list of 123 artists, of which Breaking More Waves helped compile, was whittled down to a shortlist of 8. The final 8 are, in alphabetical order: Emily and the Woods, J Treole, Louise and the Pins, My First Tooth, My Tiger My Timing, Treetop Flyers, Tristam and Twin Brother. You can hear all of the bands on the player below.

"The standard of acts on the Emerging Talent Competition long list really was very high - for which we have to thank the blogger judging panel. It certainly wasn't easy to whittle them down to just eight artists for the live finals. But, after much tea and heated debate, we think we've come up with a great selection of acts, all of whom have a real chance of winning the main stage slot at this year's Festival. Bring on the finals!” said the judges.

Those of a certain alphabetical persuasion will notice the number of finalists that contain the letter T – as well as two of the bands having the word My in their title. The short list probably doesn’t contain that many unknowns for fans of new music – the vast majority of the acts on the list already having had some degree of exposure and being reasonably well established. This is something that we found when judging our cluster of bands for the long list as well – 2 of our 3 choices had already had exposure with only our third choice being a completely new band.

The live final takes place on the 2^nd April at Pilton Working Mens Club. Keep an eye out on our twitter and this blog for updates on that.

ETC Shortlist 2011 by glastonburyofficial