Live Review: Laura Marling Secret Cinema @ Old Cardinal Pole Catholic School

Laura Marling is never one to shy away from an unusual gig setting. In 2011, she conducted an ‘experiment in awkwardness’, whereby people were brought into a caravan two-by-two at Camp Bestival for private performances, before leaving without a word. Tonight’s collaboration with Secret Cinema is an equally peculiar affair.

Billed as an ‘immersive live music experience’, the dress code is listed as vintage black tie, and guests are asked to bring a host of unusual gifts for Josephine Undine, the Lady of the Manor. The Manor in question being the Grand Eagle Hotel, which is actually an old converted schoolhouse, complete with chapel and dining hall. These aren’t unusual requests for Secret Cinema, a company known for its lavish performances. These are unusual requests, however, for the unsuspecting ticket holders who weren’t expecting much more than a set from Laura. As a result, the crowd on the first night is a mixed bag of those clad in floor-length gowns and tuxedos, and those wandering around perplexed in jeans and cardigans.

Each room of the hotel has been done up to resemble a dilapidated 1920s stately home, and actors dressed as servants and maids roam the halls with stories and secrets to tell. If you listen carefully and pay attention, each room boasts a subtle nod to Laura’s new album, ‘Once I Was An Eagle’. Her ghostly vocals are playing looped endlessly in the bedrooms, and typewriters loaded with lyrics are conspicuously placed in the writing room.

Halfway through the evening, Laura pops up on a balcony to play a cover of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Dancing In The Dark’ with guitarist Eddie Berman, before disappearing behind a door. From this moment, things take a turn for the frantic. Is Laura going to play each song in a different place? Are there any clues to where they might be? Why is there an empty chapel if she’s going to pop up in corridors with no notice? The hotel storyline and theatrics become a subplot in the search for Laura.

The search lasts about 20 minutes, with guests dashing between rooms following stage whispers from staff members. At last a commotion forms in the main hall, as the crazy-looking barefoot girl that everybody had been nervously avoiding has a wordless, furious fight with her lover. A klaxon sounds, and the guests are told to make their way out of the hotel via the smoker’s area, where they’re shuffled to a school hall in which Laura’s band play an interlude on loop until the room fills.

After the theatrics of the hotel, the gig itself is surprisingly low-key. The band leaves the stage after a four-song opener from ‘Once I Was An Eagle’, and Laura finishes the set alone. Playing a further eight songs comprised almost entirely of new material, she seems relaxed and plays seamlessly. The new album plays more delicately live, and the lyrics get a proper airing without the aid of strings or percussion. With the exception of a fast-and-furious rendition of lead single ‘Master Hunter’, Laura plays through the album’s more sombre moments ‘Once’ and ‘Little Bird’ with sad gazes and whispered verses.

Laura manages to sneak in a token song from her second and third albums in the form of ‘What He Wrote’ and ‘Sophia’, before finishing with a forceful and fiery ‘Saved These Words’ and politely leaving the stage as the lights come on. She may have performed a beautifully sparse set, but tonight’s gig is brief and pales in comparison to the evening’s extravagance. Secret Cinema have pulled off a massively intricate show, but they forgot that ticket holders came to see Laura, and should have saved some more of the performance for her.

Review: Laura Marling - Once I Was An Eagle

Laura Marling’s progression since 2008’s Alas I Cannot Swim has seen her develop into one of the most accomplished songwriters of her time. Where her early friends and bandmates have burst through and conquered the mainstream charts (Mumford and Sons, Noah and the Whale, you may have heard of them), Laura has steadily grown to be one of the most adored yet relatively unknown talents of the folk industry.
In 2011 Laura released her third album, A Creature I Do Not Know. It was a triumphant album, one that saw Laura finally embrace her folkstress status and eschew the “indie nu-folk” label that stuck around through her first two efforts. It was an album riddled with stories, metaphors and characters. Once I was an Eagle is a different story altogether. Where Laura’s favoured metaphor and storytelling in the past, she’s flinchingly honest now.
In When Were You Happy, Laura sings “I find the more I think the harder it is to breathe.” In Love Be Brave she sings “How did I sleep at night, with you so far from my side?” In Saved These Words she sings “Thank-you naivety for failing me again.” The album reads like a diary entry, the most personal songwriting Laura’s showcased since 2010’s Blackberry Stone. Whilst she’s more than capable of telling a story, and knows her way around lyrical imagery, Laura’s at her best when she’s being honest.
The sixteen songs that make up Once I Was an Eagle were written over the course of a number of years, with Pray for Me being an old live favourite since the release of her second album in 2009. It’s more a collection of songs than a traditional album, like a greatest hits of new material. What it lacks in cohesiveness, it more than makes up for in variety. There’s the gentle, unaccompanied acoustic lullaby of Little Bird, the crashing drums and banjo of Master Hunter and the angry shouts of Saved These Words.
At just over an hour in runtime, and with each song hovering around the five-minute mark, it’s Laura’s most sprawling effort to date. Once I was an Eagle has taken the best bits from each of her previous albums and combined them to form an expansive, twisting, turning performance that stands alone as one of the greatest folk albums in a very, very long time.

Review: Vampire Weekend - Ya Hey

(Originally published on DIY)

Despite sounding like an homage to a certain Outkast song, the latest single to be released from upcoming album Modern Vampires of the City is actually a documentation of Ezra Koenig’s growing disdain for god.  

Ya Hey may sound like nonsensical sentiment, but in fact it’s a reference to Yahweh, the national god of the Iron Age kingdoms of Isreal and Judah. Yes, really. “I can’t help but feel that you see the mistakes, but you let it go” sings Ezra, who lists the nonbelievers as the faithless and the zealous hearts.

If Ya Hey is any kind of sampler for the new album, it seems Koenig and co have replaced the tales of college campuses, taxi cabs and traditional rice drinks for more sombre and serious themes. Ezra’s said in interviews that Modern Vampires of the City is the final instalment in the Vampire Weekend trilogy, but if the album continues down the path that Ya Hey, Diane Young and Step have paved, it looks like it might not be a very happy ending.

The song is accompanied by a video of various monks and members of the band spraying champagne off of a rooftop in New York (of course) which you can watch below.

Interview: Swim Deep

Photography by Charlotte Dart

Originally published in Pebble

“The one thing we asked not to be on our rider was tortilla chips….and they’ve given us tortilla chips. We’re fuming.” sighs bassist Cavan McCarthy as he, along with the rest of Swim Deep, settle into their dressing room, prior to their slot supporting Two Door Cinema Club. The dressing room at Southampton Guildhall is almost as plain and unsuspecting as the contents of their rider (which in fact extends to a selection of off-brand crisps and juice) and provides an alarming contrast to the band, particularly drummer Zach Robinson, who removes his jacket and hood to reveal a nipple-grazing crop top and bright green dip-dyed hair.

 The gig is the latest in a line of support slots for the band, who recently toured with Spector and Splashh, a period which lead singer Austin Williams describes as “a learning experience…probably.” When asked what knowledge it was that he actually picked up from the tour, he responds “when you tour with other bands, you learn a lot about how tight you need to be as a band and how much rehearsal you need to do to sound right.” Considering Swim Deep are a fairly young group, both in terms of their time together and their own years spent alive, having only started performing as a four-piece last March, they’ve been given plenty of opportunities to fine-tune and hone their sound. Since releasing their first single “King City” last year, the band have popped up on virtually every ‘ones to watch’ list worth reading and their wistful, brooding lyrics on their debut single King City caught the eye of Chess Club Records, who signed them last August. “Wanting to be in places outside of Birmingham inspired King City. I don’t think many of us have really travelled that much, apart from Newcastle and Southampton…but I can confirm theM42 is amazing” claims Austin, who’s trying his hand at learning Spanish  on the tour bus, between their current shows “I downloaded a Spanish thing for my iPad, so I’m gonna be learning bloody Spanish soon, because we’ve got a few foreign festivals coming up”

In actual fact, they’ve got more than a few foreign festivals coming up. As well as booking a number of coveted festival slots, including Austin’s SXSW and Benicassim, the band are about to set out on their first ever headline tour later this month. “I think people should expect a really good show, because we want to work really hard for it, and to get a taste of the album” says Cavan. Ah, the album. With a handful of singles released thus far to a rousing reception, the pressure is really on the band to deliver with their debut full length. Recorded entirely in a studio in Belgium, it’s currently shaping up to be ready for release by May, or so they hope. “We were living in the studio when we made it, so when you wake up in the morning you’d just leave your bed and go to the studio in your dressing gown, it was very trippy because it was so surreal” recalls Zach, who adds that the band were used to recording in the middle of the night, crowded around in one room. “”When we started, we were just jamming, and then we realised we were good at it. Swim Deep is actually quite a recent thing, but it feels like it’s been leading up to this for years” remembers Austin, who met guitarist Higgy when they were both working in Morrison’s. From there, they recruited drummer Zach, and eventually Cavan joined the group last year. Before working in Morrisons, Austin claims he’d always wanted to work as a musician, or something similar…“I used to want to be a rapper. I became a singer because it’s the closest thing, I’m pretty much a rapper…just a little bit slower.”

Despite most of their songs culminating from various “jamming sessions”, the band do actually have a songwriter in Austin. Since they began rehearsing and playing together, he’s noticed the way he writes his music adapting and evolving, and one influence keep popping up throughout our interview. “The main influence for me was David Bowie. Before, we were just writing songs to fill the set that you’d been booked to play, but I ended up taking some time to actually write some songs instead. I spent a lot of time listening to Bowie, and that’s when I started realising what a song could be, and it could be so much more, and it doesn’t matter how small or big a song is, if it’s got a great melody it can be the greatest thing in the world.”  They might not have come anywhere near to Ziggy Stardust’s decade spanning success yet, but if the throes of teenage fans they’ve amassed are anything to go by, they could be heroes, even if only for one album.

What do you listen to on the tour bus?

Austin: Cut Copy. Actually, that was only the last 20 minutes. Spiritualised?

Cavan: Loads of stuff, we listen to Led Zeppelin a lot.

Austin: And obviously Spanish audiobooks.

What are your favourite Swim Deep songs?

Austin: Mine’s King City. It was written ages ago, before Cav was even in the band. It’s like my little baby.

Can you all actually swim?

Austin: Me and Higgy used to go swimming after work actually, at Morrissons. There was a lot of headling Glastonbury talk in the saunas.

Why did you choose the name Swim Deep?

Higgy: One of our songs had the lyric swim deep, and it just seemed that the music we were making fitted into that name perfectly.

Austin: I don’t know what it is about it, there’s just nice imagery behind it too.

What’s been your favourite gig?

Cavan: Shepherd’s Bush was great.

Zach: Mine was Shepherd’s Bush

Higgy: Me too.

Austin: We played a christmas show in Birmingham with Peace, and it probably wasn’t the best we’ve ever played, but it was the most fun we’ve had.

Have you always wanted to be in bands, or make music?

Austin: I used to want to be a rapper, and I became a lead singer because it’s the closest thing to being a rapper. . I’m pretty much the same as a rapper, just a bit slower.

Higgy: I wanted to be a soul singer. Nah not really, I wanted to be the manager at Morrisons.

What song do you wish you’d written?

Higgy: Stairway to Heaven.

Cavan: I was gonna say that!

Zach: Down by the seaside

Austin: Life on Mars.

Interview: Alessi's Ark

(Originally published on the405)
Alessi Laurent-Marke has a very clear idea of what her new album, The Still Life, means to her. “It’s the stage in life that we’re all working towards and we’re all hoping for, where you feel aligned and accepting. It’s like that feeling of realisation” she explains, with more assertion and confidence than seems possible from a 22-year old. Whilst Alessi's sure of what The Still Life represents to her, the album is more of an exploration of how to attain it than a declaration of achievement. “My grandparents live in France, and they’re in their eighties, and they’re in the still life, as much as I can see. It would be wonderful if we could bring that still life a bit earlier to eachother, but I think it’s something that comes with experience, wisdom and time.”

In the six years since her first EP, Alessi’s done more than her fair share of growing up. Despite still living in Hammersmith, in the same room she grew up in, her lyrics betray a wisdom and other-worldliness that Alessi attributes simply to time passing. “Before when I was writing, I wasn’t really ready for my own experiences, and I was writing songs about a life that I hadn’t lived yet” she explains, “My first song was 'Glendora', which I wrote when I was fifteen, and I described a man’s body as being an island. I didn’t even know what a man’s body was like! It’s a bit embarrassing to think that I’d dive into my imagination so much.” For The Still Life, Alessi hasn’t so much dived into her imagination as recounted personal experiences, and she describes the inspiration behind album opener Tin Smithing as recalling a taxi ride she shared with an Irish man last year in Gallway, and how she sculpted a song from it. “There are moments when you feel so switched on, where everything’s loud and bright and you can’t be awake enough, and that’s when I feel inspired to write.”

Inspiration doesn’t always come that easy to Alessi, though. Throughout the interview, she hints at a period of “not seeing colour or feeling things” which she describes as a darkness, and is forthcoming about the confidence issues that still plague her as much as they had when she started. “I was at the stage where I was thinking ‘when am I going to make a new record? Do I even want to make a new record? Does anybody want to make a record with me?’ Y’know, the types of things you think about at four in the morning, every morning. I struggle with confidence in myself, and that’s something that’s still there, but with the record, I feel quite confident in the sound” she explains. The confidence issues and 4am nerves subtly worked their way into The Still Life, particularly in track ‘Money’, where Alessi alludes to the struggle and sings “What’s clearer in the dark makes getting out of bed so hard.”

For all her claims of growing up and the lessons she’s learned, there are a few tell-tale signs that remind us that Alessi is still only 22. The tendency to slip into French when singing is one of them. “There were times when I didn’t know how to write what I wanted to say, and I couldn’t possibly say it in English words.” she begins, “I thought I might be able to say it easier in the language that I find so comforting, because it’s the language that my mother has always spoken to me. It’s a bit of a cop-out, using another language to say the things I find the hardest to say!”

When it comes to the actual production of the album, Alessi went about the process a bit differently to her previous two efforts. The Still Life was recorded in the home of singer-songwriter Andy Lemaster in Athens, Georgia. “I felt like it wasn’t enough to work with a producer, I really wanted a sidekick. I wanted it to be a very small unit, because I thought we’d get closer to the sound if it was just me and Andy” Alessi claims, and describes a three-week period of late nights, early morning walks and experimenting with synths. “It was fun to play around with a different soundscape, and playing synths and bringing in a more digital aspect to it. I think this is the first record where I went into the studio with a more focussed idea of how I wanted it to sound, and I really wanted it to be representative of the music I’d been listening to.” The final product is definitely a departure from her earlier acoustic work, and whilst Alessi might struggle to express herself and how she’s feeling, she’s entirely confident when explaining the record. “I feel like The Still Life is kind of an embodiment of a positive mental shape. People really relate to some of the songs, because it’s how they feel, or how they’re mum felt last week, and it’s like therapy. That’s what music is to me, and I hope I can do that for other people.”

The Still Life is out on April 15th on Bella Union.

Interview: Essiebutton

Beauty blogging is not a new thing. For years, make-up artists and experts have posted tutorials, hints and tips online to the ever-expanding market of young female readers. In the past few years, however,YouTube has taken on a life of it’s own, replacing the humble make-up tutorial with video equivalents, beauty hauls, and has given readers an altogether more personal experience. Whilst the market of YouTubers is still dominated by the professional make-up artists, there’s a select few who break through and attract a mass following, despite no formal make-up artist training. Estée is22 years old, and started her channel Essiebutton in 2011. She’s never studied beauty or make-up (in fact, she’s mid-way through a Psychology degree) yet her channel has attracted over 120,000 subscribers.

Estée’s background is a little different to the traditional beauty blogger. Born and raised in Canada, it wasn’t until she met her boyfriend online that Estée upped sticks and moved to London. “We’d been talking online for a year, and the whole time I’d been thinking about whether I’d move to England. In the end it was an easy decision to make, but it wasn’t an easy transition” she admits, and has spoken in previous videos about her difficult first few months in England. “When I moved up here, I had a lot of time to myself. I stumbled across the world of beauty blogs, and I thought that’d be a great way to fill time and make friends” and so in March 2011,Estée started up her blog.

Essiebutton started as a beauty and lifestyle blog, a daily outlet for Estée to post about her favourite make-up and skincare products, as well as a few lifestyle posts; often recipes or photos from days out in and around London. It wasn’t until her blog became relatively established that she decided to join on the community of beauty ‘gurus’ on YouTube. “I’d always been obsessed with beauty” she begins, “I was blogging for three months before I started doing YouTube videos,  and I was really nervous to start because I was watching girls who were really professional and I knew I couldn’t be like that, I swear a lot!” These ‘professional’ videos were recorded and uploaded by channels like PixiWoo and TanyaBurr, that are run by trained make-up artists.The videos that Estée and a lot of other YouTubers make are a bit more personal, and stray away from the ‘guru’ image that’s attached to many beauty channels. “My first video was fifteen minutes long, and it was about three make-up brushes” she says, “I really didn’t know what I was talking about, it was so boring!”

 Since that first video, Estée’s youtube channel has gained over100,000 subscribers, and 4 million views. She wasn’t an overnight success,though. Like many of the more popular and successful channels, Estée’s fanbase was slow-burning. “I get a lot of emails saying ‘how do I get views’ and they don’t realise that I’ve been doing it for three years, it’s not like it was an instant overnight thing!” she insists, and is the first to admit that as many lovely and flattering comments she gets, there’s always a few mean ones.

The anonymous nature of the internet means that hatefulor nasty comments can be posted without filtering, and YouTube is one of the top offenders. “In all the mean comments I get, like ‘you think you’re all that now’ people are downright mean! The comments don’t bother me because they don’t know me, but they can be really horrible.” Estée’s channel has also received an unexpected backlash from parents, “I get emails from mums saying ‘You said the F-word and now my daughter’s saying it’ but I don’t look at myself as a role model. It really makes you censor yourself.”

 There’s also a stigma attached to blogs and channels thatare sent PR samples for free, something which Estée understands “I can appreciate why people don’t trust some of the reviews, but I can’t go out and buy all the new collections each week! If I get sent products and they’re shit, I don’t want to put them on my blog! People don’t see the emails I send saying ‘Thank-you for that foundation, but I got a head to toe rash, so I won’t be featuring it’” The ethical side of having such influence over her readers affects Estée too, “I don’t want to say that I really like something, then have my 14 year old viewers save up all their money and go to space NK to buy it! That’s not what I’m about.”

Despite finding out quite early on that she could forge a career from YouTubing, Estée insists that it was never about that for her, and she doesn’t live the flashy, glamorous lifestyle that so many bloggers seem to. “I don’t go out, ever! If I get some money, instead of buying a top or a camera, I’ll buy a blush! I’ve been collecting make-up since I was about 15. It’s my passion” and despite her success on both YouTube and as a blogger, Estée has other ideas for her future.“I’ve always liked the idea of being school councillor. I’d like something that I can be creative and have fun with. Or actually my dream job is a travel journalist, I know everyone says that but I’d love that!”

The carefree, humble and self-deprecating attitude of Estée, both in person and in her videos, is what attracts so many viewers, and allowed her to meet and befriend so many of her fellow bloggers. “I felt so lonely when I moved here, and when I actually started finding a common interest, that was brilliant. It’s like we have a bond. All of my friends are from the internet, and making these videos and going to these blogger events has really been the best way for me to make such close friends.”

Review: Daughter - If You Leave

As the title would suggest, If You Leave is quite a bleak album.

Singer Elena Tonra has obviously had a tough time of it lately, and she’s not afraid to share her heartbreak, particularly in ‘Tomorrow’, in which she whispers “by tomorrow I’ll be left in the darkness, among your cold sheets” and “I’ve been dreaming of strangers kissing me in the night just so i can feel something” in Human. Pairing her fragile, vulnerable vocals with equally vulnerable and heart-breaking lyrics, the album should make for a depressing listen.

Instead, it’s saved by the addition of a bursting, thumping band accompanying her, and some of the best moments on the album come from Elena’s eerie layered harmonies being interrupted by crashing drums. The album falters only in that it runs a little long in places. Album closer Shallows comes in at a lengthy seven minutes, and compared to the 4/5 minute average of the rest of the album, it lingers for a little too long.

Despite this, Daughter have managed to create a beautifully bleak first effort, and if heartbreak is what inspired this album, from a selfish perspective, let’s hope someone breaks Elena’s heart again soon.

8/10