With a week before I return to Oxford, and having been fairly productive writing an essay over the last few days, I thought I'd catch up with some blogging - and wanted to share the new lyric video for the title track of the new Ryan O'Reilly album, The Northern Line. If you're from London or, like my, visit quite a bit, the tube-related lyrics might resonate with you, but the track is worth a listen either way. I'm particularly fond of the strings towards the latter half of the track, and I'm a big fan of the tone of Ryan's voice - glad to have seem him live twice in February supporting King Charles and will definitely be looking out for another show.
The new album, The Northern Line, is due to be released on 6th May, and you can preorder it digitally from Amazon here.
Exciting news yesterday from Ryan O'Reilly, who supported on the recent King Charles tour. His album The Northern Line is set to be released through DNA Records on 6th May. Posting the announcement on Facebook Ryan wrote "We'd like to thank you all for following us over the last weeks, months and years, it's been a long exciting road for all of us involved and we're very proud to finally have a collection of music like this."
Album artwork, source: https://www.facebook.com/ryanoreillyband
The track list is as follows, and features November (embedded below), one of the tracks that stuck with me from the two support sets I caught him playing in February:
November
Northern Lights
Sometimes Things Just Happen
The Love That You Wasted
Evil Quarter Mile
The Black & The Blue
The First Time
The Northern Line
Gypsy Tree
I Never Told Her
The Flood
The One
Tamsin
Boats Against The Current
After remembering how much I enjoyed creating a playlist at the end of last year with something like 60 tracks from various artists I'd seen live, new records I'd enjoyed and music I'd rediscovered over the year, I thought I'd create one entitled Feb 2016, a little musical insight into my month.
All the tracks but two (JackGarratt and LittleBrotherEli) are from bands and artists I've seen live this month and wanted to share with you all, and although I'm totally averse to Spotify and the tiny amount it pays artists, and would never use it a primary listening tool (someones got to buy physical music...) - it is pretty handy for a playlist! I didn't want to label it as a 'tracks of the month' playlist or anything, because I'm not being critical or comparing the tracks, simply sharing what I've enjoyed this month in a really personal way which I believe is in keeping with the nature of the blog itself!
A little note about why I've chosen each artist/track:
Leo Stannard 'My Friends Got Love' - having known about Leo for a while I finally caught him live this month at a Mahogany show and was taken aback by his talent. This track is my favourite track from his recently released EP Free Rein.
Roberto y Juan 'I Used To Relax' - I went to see the band's EP launch mostly to check out the support set from Count Drachma aka Oli Steadman, but have been struggling to stop listening to the EP since!
King Charles 'Tomorrow's Fool' - one of my favourite artists, I saw Charles and his band live twice on his tour in February and this is one of my favourite tracks from the recent album, that guitar solo just before 2 minutes in...
Little Mammoths 'Waitresses & Barmaids' - it's only February and I've already seen these guys play three times this month, the first time for almost 3 hours acoustically in a booth at a Notting Hill pub, the second at Oxford Sofar Sounds, and the last, this week, the first gig I've ever organised.
Blossoms 'Blown Rose' - having not really listened to these guys until the day of the show I went along to their sold out gig at The Bullingdon in Oxford (I run the venue's Twitter so get free access). I've been hearing a lot about them and it was clear they're pretty well loved - and there was a lot of love in the room for Viola Beach too, who should've been supporting them on the tour.
Sylva Kay 'The Bend' - Sylva supported at the Jonny Payne show I ran the door for in Oxford at the beginning of the month, and while I was busy with the door during her set, I caught some of her soundcheck and loved it!
homeplanetearth 'Phat Phil' saw these guys last night playing a support set for Bel Esprit, and was introduced to them through my placement with Tigmus, who they're playing a few shows for. Love this debut single!
Jack Garratt 'The Love You're Given' - you probably don't need me to tell you who Jack Garratt is as the man has become absolutely huge as of late with awards and nominations all over the place. This track from his debut album Phase which was out recently is the one that stuck with me after I saw him support Mumford & Sons in November.
Jonny Payne & The Thunder 'Across the Brooklyn Bridge' - before running the door for Jonny's show in Oxford earlier this month I took a listen to some of his session videos online and loved this track!
Roberto y Juan 'What's Your Favourite Colour?' - on the band's new Monster Love EP, this is probably my favourite track - loved hearing it live again when they supported at the Little Mammoths show I organised earlier this week.
Tom Figgins 'Giants Played In Woods Like These' - a couple of sessions Tom filmed with Mahogany have been uploaded this month, including this track. He played a superb set supporting Leo Stannard at his Mahogany show.
Leo Stannard '19' - couldn't decide which track to share from Leo's EP and loved his show for Mahogany so much that I decided to just share two! Definitely felt like I was watching a star in the making at that show, can't wait to se where his music takes him this year.
Little Mammoths'Keep The Rounds Coming' - this track features on LM's album which is out later in the year and I've been sent to review (brilliant stuff!), it's also pretty fitting as they're playing 20 shows in pubs around Ireland over 8 days in March (acoustic sets in the day, rock n roll at night).
Ryan O'Reilly 'November - Live' - as a rule I'm usually pretty fond of the supports I've seen play with King Charles, and this months tour support was no exception (and also a very nice guy when we chatted backstage after the London show). Loved his set at both shows, particularly this track with its "you'll never change the world with your songs and your guitar, there are people half your age, and they're going twice as far" chorus, a fairly melancholic reflection on combining a relationship with a career in music.
Little Brother Eli 'Who Do You' - while setting up some Facebook posts for Tigmus about an upcoming LBE show later in the year, I listened to some of their tracks - particularly some acoustic videos from various Sofar Sounds performances, and had this track stuck in my head for a while after!
Eliza & The Bear 'It Gets Cold' - similarly to Blossoms (in the same weekend, in fact), I went to their gig at The Bullingdon having not really listened to them until the day - when I discovered I knew one track as it had been on an advert. Had a really fun night at the show and this track went down pretty well, as did the whole show!
King Charles 'Animal Desires' - with his new album out in the last week of January ,and a tour in the middle of the month, much of my month has been spent listening to Charles so I had to finish up the playlist with him! When I saw the track listing for the record I was very happy to see this track included.
If you've made it this far - I'd love to hear (either as a comment on this post, or onto my blog Facebook page or my Twitter) if you enjoyed the playlist or a specific track. If the response is good I might carry on making monthly playlists!
I saw the magnificent King Charles again on Thursday night, playing the last show of his UK tour at London's Oval Space. After the superb set last Saturday in Southampton (write-up here) I had high expectations and the show was (of course!) just as good - a triumphant hometown return, even if the venue did seem to be trying to blind us with an awful lot of smoke machine action (here's what Ryan O'Reilly's support set looked like.) The show was my 12th time seeing Charles live and 10th gig of the year - and probably my favourite so far! Talking of favourites, the more I listen, the more I fall in love with Charles' record Gamble For A Rose which came out 4 weeks ago today - it's certainly got album of the year potential, so take a listen if you haven't yet!
A definite highlight of the show for me is the start of the encore, with Charles returning to the stage and performing a solo version of Beating Hearts, which I got a video of last night (above). Another, far more loud and energetic highlight of the show, as I mentioned in my write-up of Southampton, is the new guitar shredding interlude of Brightest Lights, which I recorded in its beautiful 5 minute entirety and you can see here - seriously insane experiencing that live.
Everyone in Charles' band and team are absolute legends and it always overwhelms me how welcoming they are towards me, so it was lovely staying around backstage at the show - even if I lost track of time and had to run for the last tube, and then, once I'd caught it, noticed my hand was somehow covered in blood (no idea?!) Bring on the next run of shows - I imagine they'll be doing a few festivals!
Really enjoyed Ryan O'Reilly's support set at the King Charles show on Saturday night in Southampton. After a bit of confusion over the door times a lot of us were waiting for quite a while so after the wait in the venue Ryan's set was a welcome surprise - and I wasn't the only one loving it, the whole crowd were applauding really loudly. That might've been helped along by the fact that Ryan told anecdotes of his youth in Southampton! A highlight of his set was a funny track called Your New Man which, he explained, is about stalking your ex and their new partner on Facebook. The lyrics (as you'll hear if you watch the session performance above) were pretty amusing and it went down a treat! Looking forward to seeing Ryan again on Thursday at Charles' London show.
Last night saw my 8th gig of the year - the first of which I've paid for, in fact... totally worth every penny. As it was the third night of the King Charles tour, I'd seen some great tweets above the previous two shows in Manchester and Sheffield, and was quite excited to see the new live set. Support came from Ryan O'Reilly, whose set I loved - I'll share a session video of him tomorrow!
King Charles and his band performing St Peter's Gate
Having seen Charles and his band 6 times last year, the new songs were all cemented in my brain but this was the first show I've seen since the release of his second record, Gamble For A Rose, so to hear other people singing the new songs was pretty fun. The crowd were fairly vocal and a highlight of the night was when Charles returned to the stage for an encore, starting with a solo performance of first album track Beating Hearts - hearing the whole room sing the lyrics back to Charles had me on the verge of tears!
One track I was eagerly anticipating was New Orleans, the only track off of the new album which I hadn't heard before either live or on a session video. I love the album version and was interested to see what the live performance of the track would be like, I've posted a video of the track here. After this finished they performed St Peter's Gate so I carried on filming (video below), the track was a bonus acoustic track on the last album, but there's a revamped full-band version on the new record so it was the first time seeing the track performed this way, and I loved it!
Probably the highlight of the whole show however, which can't escape mention, was the extended version of first album track Brightest Lights, which is something like 9 minutes long. There's an interlude of guitar shredding which created an incredible atmosphere. Sometimes when that kind of thing happens it can feel like the band is dragging out a track unnecessarily, but it glued together so well and blew me away entirely. A snippet of it is below..
Basically - I could go and see Charles and his band live all the time and not get bored. Last night was such a fun show and I can't wait to see the guys again on Thursday in London. It's so great to see Charles loving the shows as much as he seems to be too, and that really reflects in the crowd's enjoyment of the show! Also I've got to mention this product, earplugs from Alpine Hearing - as I go to so many shows I decided getting some earplugs was probably a good decision to protect my hearing, and last night was the first big show where I've used them. Taking them out during a track makes it so clear how much of a difference they make, and makes it actually worrying quite how loud a show can be, particularly when you're at the front. It was the first time I'd used them for a show where I was seeing a favourite band of mine, and while you might worry that they'd affect your enjoyment by changing the sound, by reducing the noise of people talking around you etc (and a bunch of technical stuff I won't pretend to understand) they actually make the music clearer to an extent. I definitely recommend looking for a pair of earplugs if you get to a lot of shows like I do!
I recently realised I ramble about King Charles a fair bit on here, but it's been almost a month since the last post about him - a suitable gap?! Absolutely love this session he played for Rockstone Sessions back in January on the day of his album release (his album Gamble For A Rose if you're not already aware, which happens to be a beautiful record and comes highly recommended by me....)
If you want to see Charles live, he's playing a UK tour which kicks off in a couple of days in Manchester, and finishes up at London's Oval Space on the 18th, taking in Sheffield, Bristol, Leeds and more in between. The full band set up live never ceases to amaze me, I saw the guys play six times last year and could probably never get bored of seeing them! Support for the tour comes from Ryan O'Reilly, check out the video for his track Northern Lights.
