It´s Autumn already...

...and I wish it would thunder.

To a more literal song title one:

I´m out of luck though. Autumn here is looking like an out of place Spring after a not-that-hot Summer. Spring and Autumn are not that different here but clear skies and 30ºC are not exactly the best preparation for the cold rainy months ahead.

Cold rainy months ahead with exciting music coming up. I´m stuck at this for now:

Amazing second single of the album yet to be released. The first single is the demanding catchy one obviously.

But there´s a lot more new music this Autumn.

Besides Snow Patrol there will be new albums of Feist (already available on the internets, Diane Birch (I hope) and Marit Larsen whose last Tumblr post is the line-up of the third album. And I believe there is some more albums that might interest me coming out. Unfortunately I don´t remember any more for now but they might be mentioned here soon.

Enjoy the music while you admire the beautiful colours of the leaves falling from the trees leaving them naked. You pervs.

Review - Anna Calvi - Hard Club (Porto)

Doesn´t look like but Anna Calvi is almost 30 years old. She´s another musician showing there is no age restrictions when it comes to release your debut album. The reason, as she says, she never came up as the front girl of a band is...shyness.

Well, she now is the front girl of her own project and there´s no shyness at all when she´s holding her Fender Telecaster.

Compared by many, in barely every music magazine, to Brian Eno, Nick Cave, Jimi Hendrix and PJ Harvey she claims her influences come from all of those plus Nina Simone and David Bowie. She has, indeed, something playing on her behalf: she is unique. You won´t find anyone this days doing the music she does and if you find, please, do tell. She is a mix of all the ones mentioned already in a cocktail served shaken, not stirred.

After album promotion, a few concerts, tv appearances and a presence in many Summer festivals she is now on her first proper tour that will basically be all around Europe and also US and Canada. Not bad for a first album. A Mercury Prize Nominee album. Not bad indeed.

It´s easy to describe the audience that will receive her during this tour. They are all on their 30s - minus 10 plus 10 doesn´t make a big difference - which could all be close friends of her and who know exactly who she is and what to expect from her.

You can easily prove that knowledge when one of the singles is played as one of the first songs - which the very first is "Rider To The Sea" - which is "Blackout". Ovations echoed through the room as the first chords are beautifully played and a powerful voice fills the place. Although much, that probably never listen to her besides singing, won´t hide a certain surprise when a sweet-fragile "Thank You" comes out of her mouth at the end of every song as if it was not the same person that just sang her lungs in a flawless, effortless way.

Anna brings two companions to help her. By her left she has an incredibly talented lady who plays [approximately] 101 instruments. I can assure she plays them all, so no show-off-only, but I can almost guarantee you 99% of all the people that will watch her on this tour can correctly name them all. I can give a help and say that one is a triangle. I think.

On the back there´s the drummer. A simple guy...not more than, and I wish I could go for technical terms here, 6 pieces on his drum set. And a microphone for some back vocals. It´s a perfect fit...Anna´s guitar and his drum set.

Drum set in which my personal favourite - "Suzanne and I" - starts with a beautiful beat and goes on with the perfect guitar skills and powerful voice of the lady in charge. As Anna leads us to her album - "First We Kiss"; "Morning Light"; "The Devil" - you get the feeling that, at least live, there´s no weak songs on the recorded version of it. Which is quite right. She takes inspiration from flamenco for her style and also for her music. While to the visuals the connection is quite easy to make when it comes to the music you have to listen a few times to get there. But there´s some of it on a strong contender to "Suzanne and I" for my favourite one which is "I´ll Be Your Man".

Another single, "Desire", and "Love Won´t Be Leaving" (probably the song I would recommend for a first Anna Calvi listen) makes the crowd be sure their money was more than well spent. She comes back for the Encore after being acclaimed by an happy audience and ends the show with an Edith Piaf cover - "Jezebel". A suitable end for a great night where she can for one last time deliver that voice and [superb] guitar skills.

A shy Anna waives goodbye. You walk away commenting on how fantastic her voice is as you listen others say the same. Will always be like this at her concerts I´m afraid. Will be a night well spent.

Does not matter which Factor it is

She has it.

Can´t find a version of this that does not say "Embedding disabled by request" so click here please

+



+

For more amazing talent >> www.youtube.com/user/janetdevlin

I´m like...whoa!

Late night session

Tonight´s session of this night owl already included:

Listening of my favourite radio show on a session where they talked about Summer music festivals;

Nerina Pallot´s home concert/answering questions stream sessions that she used to make at her own house for pleasing her fans - yes, she is that awesome;

Listening to late night BBC Radio 2 shows...Nerina led me there;

Taking a look at photos on devianART;

Late night snacks.

If I was rich and own a shinny-fancy DSLR camera I would let you call me an hipster. I don´t even have some skinny jeans so no hipster tag here. Shame.

Also, as I mentioned night owl...this is spot on:

Note: Red notes by me.

Around The Interwebz

And around the world:

MOVE from Rick Mereki on Vimeo.

Amazing!
And take a look to the other two short films of the series!

No comments

Why would someone that works on the online department of a newspaper arrive to a conference room for some brainstorming and suggest something like: "What if. We. Let our online readers...comment the news we post on our website?" (there´s no typos, that´s how I actually picture the man/woman saying that to a group of people seated on executive office chairs around a big table).

But the problem here is not the guy who came with this brilliant idea on his head and spent all day excited to present it. We all have bad ideas. No. The problem is the group of people around that big table that went: "But. That´s a brilliant idea!!! How we didn´t think of this before?! Brilliant! Let´s do it."

And off they went apply it.

Now I wonder if those same people who thought this would be a good idea actually give a read to the comments on the news that they write. Well, watching how well written are some pieces of "journalism" I see in some online newspapers I believe that they don´t even read their own texts to see if there´s any mistakes.

I usually take a look to two [Portuguese] online newspapers. One because I bought it during a period of time due to the free offer of a photography course and liked their work and a economic one that is available free of charge at my college (an interesting surprise) and that after getting it every day I started to enjoy their work too and now, on holidays, like I´m not there to get it I take a look at the website. I also tend to miss the news on television hence this look around the papers.

If you´re looking for a despicable laugh look no further than an article at any of these, or any other, newspaper that let post comments. I could tell you I have a ton of adjectives to try to describe how they look like but let´s just say "ridiculous" is pretty high on that list of adjectives. If you´re feeling down and really dumb and wondering if there is someone dumber than you take a look at those comments and you are as good as new. Sure that the executives thought about not letting some [cussing/rude] words be posted but they weren´t counting with the smartasses they would have posting at their websites would use such options as including @, _, !, and other smartasses tools to get around that restriction.

You would think that the economic one being sort of elitist and directed to a specific group would have good and clear comments. Forget it. And then they let people reply to others people comments which, obviously, being this world The Internet World, a discussion will 99% of the times end with 1) insults or 2) who has the biggest weener.

You would in fact think that this kind of newspapers would look up to the likes of The New York Times or The Guardian as international references often cited in their articles and follow the example of non-available comments. Despite some of the long [opinion] articles. Why? Smartasses won´t read that long to make an easy joke. Too much of a trouble. And probably contains words they never heard of.

And nowadays with everyone [read: newspapers] having a Facebook page and posting links to their news over there you would think they could leave the comments only to that platform. But no. Why? Let´s just say that Anonymous or any sort of smartass pseudonym is a way easier way to get your smartass point across. Be a smartass and show your real name and face is not that fun.

Recent Illusion

Can please someone, preferably a female specimen, tell me that a couple of conversations with a girl does not make me, or even more important, that person like me in a, let´s say, very interesting way? I know that I´ve just found a singer called Nerina Pallot and that her, now husband, proposed to her after a 30 minutes talk when 31 minutes before they didn´t even know each other but let´s not be naive, that´s an one in a million movie-like event and that dude is a lucky mate. He is. She´s awesome.

Just because the conversations were actually interesting and lasted for some hours let´s not push things forward. I know that even the awkward silences were not that awkward...but that might had happened only on my side. Anyway after one month why do I keep thinking about it? What´s really fun and plain weird is that besides all this I still don´t have the best idea of that person´s personality and at the same time enjoyed her that much. I haven´t seen her after this period of time, we don´t live near each other and on a move that I´m usually awful at I got no reply to a text message I sent (better than receive this one though). Me and my head. I think too much.

And that´s why I think this song can be featured here:

Because that´s me.