The Wild Reeds - NPR Tiny Desk Concert YTV

24/11/15 YouTube Video

What better way to bring Autumnal cheer than this three song concert from The Wild Reeds. They visited the NPR space and performed a great acoustic set featuring a track from their début album and a couple of new ones which equally kill it. The thing that I loved the most about this video is that it is rare to see bands with multiple lead singers that have such a high standard of vocals that they could easily front the band by themselves. I think The Staves are similar but The Wild Reeds just have an edge over them with their multi instrumental-ism. It is also nice to hear the harmonica being used not just by a grizzled old man sitting on a wooden crate. Enjoy!

Temples & Childhood Live

Last night I went to a Temples gig at my favourite venue (The Library at The Institute just in case you didn't know). It was a great gig and I got there at just the right time to get a great spot on the balcony, beautiful job. The guitar playing from the lead singer in Temples was amazing and the guitars he played were some of the most stylish designs that I have seen and I loved them. I was also pleased to see Childhood supporting them who I haven't seen since Reading festival, and they were brilliant. Also supporting was Dark Bells, who were an unknown to me but I am now a bit of a fan. The gig as a whole was one of the best ones I have been to recently. Brilliant line up and brilliant sound, enough said.

Last Saturday Night Resolution

This is a bit of a random post. Basically I wanted to talk about a thing that I have been thinking about recently. It has to do with seeing live music and as of last Saturday when I went to go see Less Than Jake, Reel Big Fish and Zebrahead in Birmingham I have decided to cool it a bit with seeing live music once the shows that I have already purchased passes. There are several reasons why I am not going to go to shows as often, some of them personal but the main factor is the money. On average I spend about £30+ easily per show and I have thought that money would be better spent going towards something more long lasting and long term. I am not saying that I am going to stop going to gigs, in fact I hope to keep some sort of regularity but for sure the amount will decrease at least until I start earning beau coup bucks. My reason for posting this is to make it more of a steadfast rule that I will be less eager to break because it is in the world wide web. Lets see how much I can save.

D.O.T.F.

2014 is off and rolling now and where ever you are in the world, hope it is going well. The design I have chosen is a gig poster or rather a festival poster by Todd Slater.

It is an advert for the American festival Bonnaroo 2012. He has incorporated a lot of the bands performing at the festival as part of the swirly/cool rooster design, the words are really flowing and smooth. I really like the simple amount of colours used. In my opinion, the fewer colours the better (within reason). 

Todd Slater has also designed posters for Jack White, The National and Green Day to name but a few.

Check out more of his work:

www.ruvensivyer.tumblr.com

Design Of The Fortnight D.O.T.F.

This fortnight I would like to talk about a certain poster design team I have stumbled upon whilst browsing the web. They are called Horse and they are a team that are based in Liverpool. They focus on creating imagery for music that inspires and drives them. They have created many gig posters and album covers. For more info, click this link: http://www.youresomehorse.com/ 

After checking out a lot of their work there doesn't seem to be anything I don't like but I have chosen the style I like the most. It is simple, only using a few colours and I think that is the most effective kind of gig poster in my eyes. When I get a place of my own I am for sure going to have some of these on the wall.

          

Gutted :(

Just a quick post to say how annoyed I am with how impatient I get when purchasing concert tickets for the next gig. A few weeks ago now I purchased a ticket to see Tonight Alive (pictured below) for a concert on the 1st of October and just yesterday I received a notification off of my SongKick app telling me that Laura Marling will be playing Birmingham Symphony Hall on the same date. Sooo annoying that there wasn't even one days difference between the two artists because even the amount that I want to see Laura Marling, I still want to see Tonight Alive. I think their album is a proper killer which I think I have mentioned in a previous post and I think they will proper rock the crowd. Their tickets are not sold out yet but they should be, they are that good.  I just hope Laura does more dates in my area. Please.

 

 

 

Imagine Dragons at The Institute

Last night I went to the sold out performance of Imagine Dragons and performance was definitely the right word for it. Those guys know how to put on a show. To be honest I wasn't expecting a great deal from them, having listened to their EP and thought it was so-so, nothing special. The thing that pushed me to see them live was their support being The Good Natured. A band I randomly found out about through YouTube and liked them.

As much as I wasn't particularly excited by IDs CD I really got into their live show. The lead singer had a seemingly endless source of energy and kept the crowd jumping the entire time. And maybe part of the good energy was from the place being crammed to the max with bodies, with barely room to have your arms by your sides. But it seemed everyone was there for the same reason, to have a good time and like the singer said, to escape and forget about the outside world for a few hours.

I enjoyed The Good Natureds performance slightly less than Imagine Dragons but the lady singer was pretty incredible, with a great voice and groovy dancing to match. Also the drummer was particularly talented. The speed at which he was playing seemed awesome.

Overall surprisingly great gig!

Amy Macdonald

Yesterday night I went to see Amy Macdonald at the Symphony Hall in Birmingham. As you can see, my seat location was brilliant, right up in the grand tier a few rows from the back. It was my first visit to Symphony Hall and it is quite a classy affair. I felt a little under dressed when near enough everyone was in formal attire and I was in scrappy jeans and a T-shirt.
As a general rule I do prefer the smaller venue and due to my seat location I was dubious about what kind of sound quality I would be able to hear. And as it turns out, Any can fill the room with supposed ease. She has a much more powerful voice than I expected, and I don't think the quality diminished over the distance at all.
Most of the concert was with her full live band, but just after half way through she did a slightly more stripped back few songs with just a drummer on a smaller kit. A couple of covers were played, Higher and Higher and an acoustic Dancing In The Dark which she sang beautifully. I think there are a few videos on You Tube if you're particularly interested.
Supporting Amy was a chap called Ben Montague who was an artist along the same kind of lines. He performed with just a drummer and him playing acoustic guitar. He came across as a pretty friendly guy, chatting to the audience after each song and even hanging out by the merch stand after the show for signatures, which is a lot less common than other gigs I've been to.

Great gig, definitely recommend her!

More and more live shows

I'm really looking forward to getting my university timetable partly to see what dates I'm free to go to concerts. Up until early December there are lots of gigs that I want to go see. I found out about them thanks to SongKick, one of my favourite apps. Gigs that I want to see in date order are: The Enemy, The Gaslight Anthem, Ahab, Jack White, Jake Bugg, Bellowhead, Sonic Boom Six, The Vaccines, The View, Florence and The Machine and The Black Keys. Lets hope I can go to as many as possible, they should be really good.

I'm glad Impractical Jokers is back on tv. I have just watched the first episode of the second season and it is so so funny. I love it!