Elba Sessions

I just wanted to quickly post to let you all know of a great project which is ongoing at the moment, and as you will get from the title, it’s for a good cause. The Smith/Chesnutt/Linkous project (unsure if this is the official name) has been set up by Euan from The Steinberg Principle to raise money for Depression Alliance UK. The remit is basically that Euan has asked musicians to record a song by one of the above artists (Elliott Smith, Vic Chesnutt and Mark Linkous) which he will make available for download, for the price of £1. All proceeds go to the worthwhile charity that is Depression Alliance UK.

So far there has been a veritable feast of good artists including Pink Pills, Lovers Turn To Monsters, Lotte Kestner, The Unwinding Hours and RM Hubbert submitting songs and you can listen and download the lot over here on the bandcamp page.

Depression is an illness which affects so many peoples everyday lives and whilst I’ve sat here for a while trying to formulate some sort of words to describe my understanding of depression through experiences which I have had in my life with friends and family, this is how Depression Alliance put it; pretty accurate…

“The word ‘depression’ is used to describe everyday feelings of low mood which can affect us all from time to time. Feeling sad or fed up is a normal reaction to experiences that are upsetting, stressful or difficult; those feelings will usually pass.

Sometimes people may not realise how depressed they are, especially if they have been feeling the same for a long time, if they have been trying to cope with their depression by keeping themselves busy, or if their depressive symptoms are more physical than emotional.”

So yeah, check out this project, good people, good music, great cause.

x

KA-POW! We’ve gone all comic book with the poster for this month’s Elba gig (Thursday August 5th), courtesy of Kyle Wood. (Thanks Kyle!)

So, here it is edition #9 of Elba Sessions Presents… at The Liquid Ship and our line up is headed by Lovers Turn To Monsters, who if you happen to be unfamiliar with, he’s a pretty generous dude so scoot on over to his bandcamp page for copious downloads!

Also, joining Lovers Turn To Monsters on the bill are two glasgow based singer/songwriters. Over the next few months, well, maybe even ongoing, we thought we’d try to bring you ‘People You May Not Have Heard About’ (might try and come up with a catchier title than this off the cuff effort.) and make an effort to find some new names that you may not be familiar with. Kicking this series off is Steve Cotter, who we have also just recorded a podcast with. Joining Mr Cotter on the Liquid Ship stage (well, floor) is Jennifer Andrew. Jennifer has been gigging low key in Glasgow for several years now and we’re amazed she isn’t a bit more well known! Her songs are lovely, honest songs and we’d recommend checking her out!

As usual, the gig is free to get in and doors are at 9pm.

I like when a song just makes your foot tap/head bob/neck jerk, right from the word go. Title track ‘Funny For A Girl’ on the EP by the same name from Cancel The Astronauts does just that. In fact, The Funny For A Girl EP seems to have a habit of doing this throughout all five tracks. It’s one of those albums that by the time you are halfway through, you are already looking forward to listening from the start again.

This is the second release by Edinburgh based Cancel The Astronauts and it follows on from the first, in pretty much the same vein of every songwriters favourite theme, unrequited love. Don’t worry though, I’m not recommending an EP filled with crooning love song’s a la James Blunt, what we have here is five slices of synthy indie pop who even when it looks like they are about to start crooning, (Standing Still – Track 4), they burst into a catchy chorus filled with all the musical hooks you could possibly need. The stand out tracks for me are probably the opening track ‘Funny For A Girl’ and ‘She Said She Loves Somebody Else’.

The EP is available now from their bandcamp page for a meagre £3 and if you can negotiate through bandcamp and find their other releases, you can download their previous EP for free! They also play King Tuts this Saturday with Elba recommended Astral Planes, Galleries and Casino Brag. Word on the street is that if you drop them an email, you can get a ticket for £4 and they might even throw in a download code for their EP for each ticket purchased. Boom!!

Whilst i’m off in Paris munching on amazing pastries and lazing about here, there are some pretty good gigs going on in Glasgow.

First up, on Tuesday night is the A-T Society Fundraiser at Stereo. On the bill is former Elba Sessions guest, My Cousin I Bid You Farewell along with Ross Clark and Scott Hutchison from Frightened Rabbit. It’s all for a great cause and you can read a bit more about the A-T Society here.

On Thursday (15th July), Elba favourites Cuddly Shark play the Captain’s Rest. Word on the street is that those sharklings have been holed up on the Moray-shire coast writing some new material so expect a mix of old an possibly new songs. Also on the bill are The Lava Experiments and The Red Show.

Thursday night also sees the start of ‘Summer Nights at King Tuts’ featuring a stellar line up over the next couple of weeks of local unsigned indie darlings and cool kids! There is quite a few cracking looking line-ups over the fortnight and it all kicks of with a headline set from Silver Columns including support from MOPP, Midnight Lion and Nevada Base. You can check the full line up here and suffice to say a few of the gigs look pretty appealing to us at Elba. Astral Planes w/ Cancel The Astronauts and Galleries, French Wives, and Kitty The Lion with Julia and The Doogans on the same bill (oh lordy!).

On Saturday night our June guests, in both the pod and at The Liquid Ship, Blue Sky Archives, play Nice n Sleazy along with We See Lights. However, if it’s a blogging mecca that you are after, get yourself down to the 13th Note for the second Peenko vs Aye Tunes gig. The line up includes we’re only afraid of NYC, Randolph’s Leap (who incidentally have supplied one of my favourite lyrics for a long time and have an EP titled ‘Eeerie Indie Adam’) and Little Yellow Ukuleles. It costs a fiver to get in and if the last gig was anything to go by, you’d be advised to get your tickets in advance. You can buy from Peenko here or the much more generous Aye Tunes here! I say more generous cos you get a couple of downloads of the bands that are playing. Great idea!

In December, The Recovery Club’s Graham chatted to us at the Elba Sessions about how 2009 was for him. He mentioned to us that there were hopes of a single release in 2010 and hey presto, 8 months later, here it is! Knowing that they were an honest bunch and that they had kept their word, we thought we should really have them round to the pod to play a couple of songs and have a natter about their single ‘Rest and Be Thankful’.

The Recovery Club Podcast by elbasessions

*To download – just click on the arrow on the right hand side of the player!

If you like the cut of their gib and have fallen in love with the entrancing and soothing single you might like to know that the b-sides Weird Weather and D.N.A are just as good and that from Monday July 5th, you can purchase these tracks on the Antimatter website and at some good online stockists!

They also play The Liquid Ship on Tuesday the 6th of July to celebrate said single! Get yourself down there!