In Chapters at the Green Man

The next In Chapters is at the Green Man Festival on Sunday August 21 at 1pm. The theme will be Ghosts and the guest artistes will include Joe Dunthorne, Laura J. Martin, Rachel Trezise, Katell Keineg, David Oprava, Charlotte Greig and Jemma Roper. Richard James will be back in his role as Musical Director after last month’s layoff

Bellwether

Now and again I realise that a record I’ve played a lot over a period of years is more or less invisible to the world in general and I guess if there’s any purpose in a blog it’s to point stuff like that out. So let me commend Bellwether to you. They were from Minneapolis and they made five (I think) albums. The first two were in thrall to their influences, REM and similar US college rock stuff. But the third one, Home Late, is an absolute killer, absolutely what alt-country should have been but mostly wasn’t quite. The fact the lead track off it only has, at time of writing, 36 views on youtube is pure injustice. Here it is and if you like it, well the rest of it is all just as good

The two later albums are also pretty good, the lead singer Eric Luoma has a new band I believe. I tried to book them to play in Cardiff once but they cancelled the tour due to lack of interest. Same old story.