Now Hear This! July 2012 Issue 113 / Latitude 2012
2-Heft-CD, 2012, Cardsleeve, Digisleeve

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15 brand-new tracks hand-picked by The WORD

CD2: 15 All-Weather Tracks From 15 All-Conquering Acts At Latitude 2012
matrix: CA WORDLATITUDE @@





What's on the CD with the July 2012 issue:
1. Scoundrels - Bon Temps Rouler
While not the song made famous by zydeco godfather Clifton Chenier, this cobweb-shifting blaster nonetheless doffs its cap towards Cajun country. Fleet-footed rockabilly-cum-garage rock and roll from a bunch of Louisiana-obsessed young Londoners.
From the EP Sexy Weekend

2. Mademoiselle Nineteen - Juliet Brillait
She might now be a year or two beyond the age in her stage name, but Belgian chanteuse Juliette Wathieu still seems unfeasibly young to be making music this assured. A seductive slice of purring, strings-assisted ’60s pop.
From the album Mademoiselle Nineteen

3. Grasscut - Pieces (Radio Edit)
For their new record, duo Grasscut have hidden ten packages, each containing a Walkman and a cassette of a particular album track, at various locations across the UK. Lazier treasure-seekers need not travel – top-grade sparkly electronica is handed over right here.
From the album Unearth

4. The Dreaming Spires - Cathie (Carry On)
The album title suggests a New York postmark, but the hometown-referencing Dreaming Spires actually hail from Oxford, from where they chisel their clear-eyed power-pop. Think Petty. Think Parker.
From the album Brothers in Brooklyn

5. Bright Light Bright Light - Cry At Films
The small south Wales town of Neath isn’t known for its well-measured disco-pop, but it’s the hometown of one Rod Thomas, a man who clearly looked towards the film Gremlins when choosing his nomenclature. Originally consigned to B-side status, Cry At Films features Del Marquis from Scissor Sisters on guitar.
From the album Make Me Believe In Hope

6. The Imagined Village - Winter Singing
In another life Simon Emmerson was Simon Booth and played jazz with Working Week. Now mayor of The Imagined Village, his jazz past catches up with him here, flavouring this slinky tune from the all-star folk collective’s third LP.

7. Rose Cousins - Go First
Halifax, Nova Scotia, has produced a few musical sons and daughters, among them Sarah McLachlan and Denny “Mamas & Papas” Doherty. Add to these singer-songwriter Rose Cousins, who here dispenses with her usual folkery in favour of some piano-backed introspection.
From the album We Have Made A Spark

8. Skinny Lister - If The Gaff Don't Let Us Down
Recently described as “The Pogues with good teeth”, this quintet are total strangers to a quiet night in. They’re too busy taking their spirited and rowdy take on English folk to the masses, a sound first concocted during sea shanty sessions in the taverns of old Greenwich.

9. The Housekeeping Society - Seaside Mystery Men
Call it a concept album, call it a song-cycle. However it’s labelled, the second LP from these land-locked West Yorkshiremen takes the English seaside as its theme. And this twinkling, ukulele-led tune is surely the only song (other than Julian Cope’s Kolly Kibber’s Birthday) to reference the seaside sport of identifying a disguised newspaper reporter in exchange for a cash prize.

10. Snowgoose - Hazy Lane
From the first Postcard 45s onwards, Glasgow’s fecund music scene has frequently looked westward towards the US for inspiration. The latest to point their telescope across the water are Snowgoose, who rather exquisitely tie together British folk and Americana. Like a Sandy Denny-fronted Fairport on vacation in Kentucky.
From the album Harmony Springs

11. The Corner Laughers - Grasshopper Clock
This ridiculously melodic helping of psychedelic folk-pop from San Francisco will very rapidly become an earworm that buries itself into your skull forever. How 10,000 Maniacs might have sounded had someone told Natalie Merchant a few jokes.
From the album Poppy Seeds

12. Yngve & The Innocent - You'll Be Mine
German by birth and Irish by upbringing, this is Yngve Wieland’s second appearance on Now Hear This! This time around he offers up a break-neck declaration of love and obsession, powered along by motoring boogie-woogie piano.
From the albumSadness Of Remembering

13. A Now Hear This! exclusive: REVERE feat. Toumani Diabate on kora
Revere & Toumani Diabaté - Love Will Tear Us Apart
Paul Young was the first of many to cover the Joy Division anthem, but none have reworked it as radically as the collaboration between London’s Revere and Mali’s Toumani. Few things in life sound quite as lovely as when harp, kora, melodica and cello flow beautifully together.


14. The Moulettes - Songbird
Steam-driven folk from the capital and surrounding counties, with five-part harmonies, violas, autoharps, cellos, bassoons, etc. Promoters should note that they’re are available for bookings in “churches, castles, caves and caverns, dens of iniquity, jukebox dives…”.
From the album Bear's Revenge

15. The Gentle Mystics - Hark
This 18-legged groove machine from east London sound like they belong to a travelling circus, their dub/ rap/Balkan crossbreed enticing you into a magical netherworld populated by all manner of shady characters.
From the album Hark



15 All-Weather Tracks From
15-All-Conquering Acts At
LATITUDE 2012

15: 2010 ‘Amerikana’ digital EP track (available only to members of fan community, FES (The Flat Earth Society))
- taken from the album 'A Map of the Floating City' (2011)
thomasdolby.com:
... 'But the EP’s ‘coup de resistance’ is a 7’38″ epic entitled ’17 Hills’. Very much in the tradition of ‘I Love You Goodbye’ and ‘Budapest By Blimp’, this song weaves a bittersweet tale using words, sounds, textures, and surprising left turns in the arrangement. It features beautiful playing by Mark Knopfler, who graciously allowed me into his private studio as he added some of his signature licks, complimenting my vocal to perfection. Pedal steel player Bruce Kaphan, who produced American Music Club and has toured with David Byrne, adds soaring atmospherics. Natalie MacMaster injects a touch of Cape Breton charm with a mesmerising looped fiddle solo'