So come back I am waiting
Published on Sun 19 Jun 2011
Just back from a thing at The Cornerhouse over the road where a bunch of people who were there in that classic summer of two years ago when it was a real little community were playing. It all fell apart a bit after a while, as these things do. I guess living in a pub takes its toll, especially on the young. Of everyone who was there, Lester Allen has really blossomed. He was on TV as part of that Goldie's Band thing (that I didn't watch, admittedly), and recently played banjo on a Madness record. And, was really good just now. Touching, passionate, brutally honest (and that's coming from me) songwriting. Check it out.
So, the second week in New York... After a return visit to the crazy world of Spa Castle (it wasn't quite so fun this time, I think because the hot weather meant that the water was colder - still amazing though - I had a foot massage), we spent a couple of days in the mountains near Albany.
It's an incredibly beautiful place, though it's a more familiar kind of landscape than other places I've been in America. Apart from it being generally bigger, and the grass and trees being a subtly yellower shade of green, it could've been England. Soon after we got there we went on a little boat trip and saw a bald eagle at really close quarters. The guy whose boat it was had lived there for 20 years and had never been as close to one he said. They don't look real. 13 year old me would've been extremely excited as it looked just like the picture of one in (and on the back cover of) my book of the birds of the world. 33 year old me was still pretty excited, but spent the next 2 days being a bit annoyed he'd not taken his camera out. I'm actually a bit worried that as a race, we don't think that things really count unless we've photographed them and put them on the internet.
The day we got back we went to see Okkervil River who were playing at Terminal 5 (where we saw The Frames last year). It wasn't that long since the Heaven show but this one was even better. First up were Future Islands, who I'd not heard of before, but enjoyed a lot. I'm not cool enough to know what to call their sound (everything with synths sounds like Gary Numan to me), but there was a synth/drum machine guy, a bass guy and a growly man who moved too fast to take decent pictures of. He was properly crazy - kept on pounding at his chest and throwing his arms around. Great stuff. It's nice to see an "ordinary" looking band getting somewhere too.
Next up were Titus Andronicus who I missed at The Haymakers here earlier in the year because of, I think, a Travis Waltons show. They were... energetic. I'm not sure I caught enough of the words to know whether I loved it or not, but it was a lot of fun. The girl on the end was really going for it.
Okkervil River were amazing again. I was quite a lot nearer the front this time, which might have had something to do with liking it more because I couldn't really fault the other show. I'm not so keen on the new album, but the songs from it are pretty spectacular live and we got "So come back, I am waiting" which was incredible. Once again they misjudged the curfew so they had to just play through instead of doing an encore. I wonder if the stuff from the first couple of album has been permanently dropped now or if I've just been unlucky twice with curfews.
I was pretty happy
On the plane out there I'd seen the first half of
Barney's Version
When I got back a big box of copies of Trinkets and Offcuts was waiting for me. I'm really quite pleased with how they came out. Not as fancy as Scars, but good still. Please buy them.
Oh, I saw the piano from Big
