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!

First up a shout out to fellow bloggers Peenko and Aye Tunes. They are having a first foray into the promotion game this Friday (27/4/10) with a rather good line up at the Captain’s Rest. Joining Campfires In Winter and Kid Canaveral are Mitchell Museum who have been wearing out my iPod in the last few weeks. Tickets are £5 on the door but if you contact either blogger in advance, they’ll knock a quid off the price cos they are just like that!

Also gigging this week are young upstarts The Girobabies who launch their brand new EP ‘Social Not Working’ with a launch party this Friday at The Buff Club. It all kicks off at 7pm and only costs the princely sum of £3. You can have a wee listen to the EP on their bandcamp page.

If the previous two gigs weren’t enough for a Friday night, there’s an absolute corker going down at our home from home The Liquid Ship. Gracing the basement once again is the wonderful Julia and the Doogans along with Stevie and The Moon and Lovers Turn To Monsters. Cracking line up, I would presume gig times will run as we run it, so first act will be on at 9pm.

Then on Saturday night, Eagleowl take on the Captains Rest in the second leg of their Edinburgh/Glasgow EP launch parties. Support comes from My Kappa Roots and Rob St John. You can pre order the EP on their bandcamp page.

The readers of this blog don’t need to be told by us that Glasgow’s music scene is buzzing and the guys over at UNESCO City of Music are putting together a music stream aiming to promote all that’s good and local going on in the city. They are looking for submissions which can be uploaded to their soundcloud page or sent in by good old fashioned mail to the following address;

Glasgow City of Music
20 Trongate
Glasgow
G1 5ES

For further information you can email info@glasgowcityofmusic.com

The Glasgow Oxjam Team are on the lookout for people wanting to help out at this years Oxjam takeover, which will take place in October. There is more details on their myspace blog and you can download an application on the Oxjam website. I went along to the takeover last year and saw some great bands, Yahweh being one that stands out the memory. The best thing is that it’s all for a great cause.

What a lovely week for us to re-appear again as well. Record Store Day falls this Saturday (17th April) and we’ll be talking about that more extensively later in the week. We just wanted to mention it now and encourage you to get yourselves along to Mono, Avalanche and Mixed Up who will be heading up the Glasgow festivities with live bands, silliness (face painting!!!), the token limited edition releases and lots more.

Its also a good week for Swedish music. Former Bon Iver touring companion The Tallest Man on Earth releases The Wild Hunt today. This is Kristian Mattson’s second full length release under his alter ego. He’s a songwriter who echoes Dylan but not in that awful way that you are thinking. That comparison alone would usually put me off were I to read it but it really is an apt summary of his music. However, if your tastes lay more on the grander side, EF return with another great release. They have that magical quality inherent to a lot of Scandinavian music that completely alludes. They make your heart raw with the delicateness of their songs and then make it swell with grand, energetic arrangements.

We’ll have our usual peek at gigs midweek but just wanted to highlight a couple of things happening early this week. Julia & the Doogans, Aspen Tide and Dougie Greig play Pivo Pivo tonight as part of the Exposure Scotland run.

Also over at Oran Mor this very eve a concert for Chilean Earthquake Disaster Fund is taking place with a full and varied line up: Pauline Goldsmith(compere), Ballboy, Ken McCluskey, The Low Miffs, Kid Canaveral, The Boppin Heads, Bruce Morton (comedy), Susan Calman (comedy), “The Wee Man” (comedy), Carlos Arredondo & Galo Ceron, Tam Dean Burn (political theatre), Amy Duncan, Cora Bissett, Rustic City Fathers, Skye Lonegran, Drew Taylor (poetry), Brokeback Jockstrap, Ali Macrae, Mike Gonzalez (guest speaker).

Laura Marling will be appearing at The Old Fruitmarket on Tuesday night. I’m a sucker for pretty folk and she’s just lovely live accompanied by her full band.

Finally, in other live news, Stag and Dagger announced more of their now very busy bill for the May event last week (we’re playing catch up, sorry). Go have a gander here.

Photo by Alan Roney

At the moment we keep going back and forth here at Elba trying to decide who we want to go and see at Hinterland next week. When we sent our initial lists to each other I wasn’t particularly surprised that some of the same names were on each others list. I mean, I’d like to think we have pretty discerning tastes here at Elba (ahem, if you knew about one of our collective’s cheesy pop collection, you’d surely disagree). Several of those names also seem to have animal names in them – nearly every band I seem to like these days has an animal in the title! Anyway, today’s feature is no exception to that rule and someone we’ll definitely be going to see next weekend. I present to you Anna from Kitty the Lion…

You used to perform as ‘Anna Meldrum’. Why the change, and do you enjoy having a full band behind you?

When I was gigging as Anna someone asked me what my real name was because they thought it was a stage name. I thought that was a bit bizarre because my name is really ordinary, but maybe that’s only because I read it on envelopes a lot. Anyway, we decided to change because when I started playing gigs with a band behind me it felt really awkward when we’d get introduced as ‘Anna Meldrum’…and there were three of us. I absolutely love having a full band together now, I get all grumpy when I have to do acoustic things nowadays. The songs sound the way they always did inside my head, but everyone else gets to hear it too!

You released your single ‘Lion in the Bed’ in November. Any plans for more releases? Or maybe an album?

We’re definitely going to have another release at some point this year, not sure what it’ll be yet but most likely an EP sort of idea. A single and an album’s baby.

Glasgow has a reputation for having a lot of good venues to play in, what’s your favourite?

I like the Captain’s Rest and Nice n Sleazy. The sweaty dank ones where you get no phone signal. There are good memories hanging about in those places.

Stornoway is listed in your recent gigography, if you could play a gig anywhere, where would it be?

I’d really like to go to Iceland and imagine I was Björk.

Hinterland 2010 is fast approaching and we are looking forward to seeing your set. Is there anybody else playing the festival who you’re hoping to catch?

As many as I can! It will be cool to see the bigger names but will also be nice to see some local people I’ve listened to but not seen live, like Panda Su and The Boy Who Trapped the Sun.

We always ask anyone who does a podcast or interview on for Elba Sessions if there are any bands we should be checking out? Any recommendations?

Findlay Napier, Kristina Cox, Julia and the Doogans, Matt Norris and the Moon, Sparrow and the Workshop…

What can we expect to see from Kitty the Lion in the next year?

More commitment because I’ll have graduated from Uni!

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Kitty’s aforementioned single is out now and available for download at i-tunes, get yer mitts on a copy. For all the latest news on the band be friends over on myspace.

You can catch Kitty the Lion as part of this year’s Hinterland Festival, next Saturday (3/4/10) at various Glasgow venues (tickets here).

*The lovely photo above was brought to you by the lens of Alan Roney

11.03.2010 Upcoming folk songstre-teers Julia and The Doogans are supported by Be A Familiar at The Mill. Just text Mill74k to 82500 to get in for nothing.

11.03.2010 Also tonight the Vintage Sounds fashion/music event arrives at the QMU. The Catwalk is run from vintage providers Tatty Bon and We Love to Boogie whilst live music features Pooch and Tango in the Attic. Proceeds are going to Oxfam.

12.03.2010 Weird Tapes/Memory Cassette helmer Davey Hawk presents his hybrid Memory Tapes outfit at Stereo on Friday. Last year’s hazy debut Seek Magic showed the full length potential of this act following the hype of some high profile remixes.

13.03.2010 For those of you who devote your time to finding that band on the cusp of greatness look no further than the regional finals of Live & Unsigned 2010 at The Glasgow Royal Concert Hall. Please allow us to go fully biased and off piste for a brief moment and give our support to SeMPer Fi (WE KNOW THEM! WE KNOW THEM!)

14.03.2010 Sunday night at Stereo fantastic folky Alasdair Roberts will be supported by psychedelic Fins Kiila. Go. Just go.

Finally, and as promised, Pitchfork posted a little video by Elba favourites She and Him on Tuesday.
Let your eyes dazzle at In The Sun. Get all doe eyed for the doe eyed, here

It seems like the local music scene is beginning to hot up again after christmas and ‘The Big Freeze’ with plenty of good releases and gigs coming up. I felt like there was a real lack of decent gigs through January, however, couple this with post christmas debt and a busy day-job, it might just be me.

A band that have only recently caught my attention, thanks to Jim at Aye Tunes is Spaghetti Anywhere. They are based in London and play uncomplicated indie pop. A little bit in the vain of Belle and Sebastian or Camera Obscura although I am always very wary of comparing bands. Anyways, they are definitely worth checking out and their E.P. is released on Feb 22nd on Toy Soldier Records.

If you can’t wait until Feb 22nd for your fill of new music, I suggest you point your browsers in the direction of Glasgow based label/collective Wise Blood Industries from tomorrow where you will be able to download the new single ‘The Hours’ from The Kays Lavelle. I’ve given it a couple of listens now and the orchestration is fantastic and I just love the haunting vocals. Their album, recorded by Neil Pennycook of Meursault, is due out in the spring and no doubt when that comes around it will be very hotly anticipated.

There’s quite a few gigs this week to look out for in Glasgow this week. The aforementioned Meursault play next Sunday (21st) at Nice and Sleazys with Xiu Xiu and North Atlantic Oscillation. Working backwards, we may have mentioned at some point that King James, Maple Leaves, Craig Davidson and Cuddly Shark will be playing at The Liquid Ship on Friday night (19th), more details here. On Thursday a big Happy Birthday goes out to the Glasgow PodcART dudes. They will be having a bit of a shindig to celebrate with sets from St Deluxe, Little Yellow Ukeleles and Campfires in Winter. That all goes down at the 13th Note. Lastly (but also firstly this week), on Wednesday night at Brel the fantastic Julia and The Doogans, Panda Su and Sophie’s Pigeons will play some pretty acoustic songs.

Anyways, that’s about all my thoughts for now, we’re going to get this blog a bit more populated with features and reviews over the next few weeks so keep checking back and don’t be a stranger!

Album of The Year – Loads to choose from! Titus Andronicus – The Airing of Grievances probably tops the list though. Honourable mentions to Brakes, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, Le Reno Amps, Cuddly Shark and The Cinematics, oh, and The Phantom Band! (I could go on…)

Hopes for 2010/Things You’re Looking Forward To – Putting on more gigs, writing more for the blog (and getting better at it), seeing and hearing loads of new music, working with Armellodie records and seeing it evolve, Pavement at the Barrowlands (!!!!!!!) and putting some faces to email addresses!

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM ALL OF US HERE AT ELBA!

SEE YOU IN 2010!

A short and sweet entry today, here’s Andrea’s answers. We’d like to think favourite gig that he played was at The Liquid Ship but far be it from us to put words in his mouth!!!

Album of The Year – Sometimes I Wish I Were An Eagle, Bill Callahan

Hopes for 2010/Things You’re Looking Forward To -Looking forward to finishing my record and hearing the new Vampire Weekend record

All of Andrea’s previous material can be downloaded for absolutely nowt on his bandcamp page.

Album of The Year – Sea Sew – Lisa Hannigan.

Hopes for 2010/Things You’re Looking Forward To – Continue to meet really nice people as we go on as a band. Writing and recording new stuff. Releasing some stuff. Being creative and taking each step as it comes. Not rushing and just enjoying what we do and hopefully others will continue to do so too. And getting out and doing more gigs and giving away free fridge magnets!

I’m looking forward to getting my hands on a fridge magnet but if you fancy a wee Christmas gift from the band, sign up to their mailing list here. You also get a nice letter from Julia every so often!

Bonfire Night saw the second in our monthly series Elba Sessions Presents gigs at The Liquid Ship and I really felt on Thursday that over winter there is not many better places to be than in a candlelit basement bar listening to heart warming music with a pint of Weihenstephan in hand (note; my favourite beer). Of course this could apply to any gig, but on Thursday it was the turn of Julia and The Doogans, John Hinshelwood & Sandra Gellatly and Andrea Marini to stir the senses.

Julia and her scaled down Doogans (sans drummer) opened the evening and captivated everyone in the room with their blend of acoustic folk. Julia’s voice is fantastic and is a rare thing in that it sounds even more perfect live than it does recorded. I’m a sucker for a banjo so one of the set standouts for me was the brilliant ‘Collide’. Although notable mentions go to New York and Hummingbird. If you haven’t already caught Julia and the Doogans live, I urge you to do so soon. Trust me, it will make your life better!

Next up was the rootsy folk of John Hinshelwood who was accompanied by the voice of Sandra Gellatly and Tim Black on guitar. John, an established face on the Scottish roots and country scene blasted through a set of original material and covers. Personally, I was delighted at his Gene Clark cover as ‘White Light’, is one of my favourite albums and the combination of his and Sandra’s voice got my toe a tappin’.

Our final artist of the evening was October’s Elba Sessions Podcast guest, Andrea Marini. There is something about Andrea’s music that he makes look effortless and I don’t know that I’ve ever seen an artist look more comfortable and at ease when performing than he does. Accompanied by a full band for the evening Andrea treated us to a heartfelt set of his songs. The outstanding ‘Windmills’ was a real standout and is one of the tracks on his ‘IV Songs’ cd which was left ‘just in the middle, over there’ for us to help ourselves to, which we gladly did. It was a great way to end the evening and sent us off out into the guy fawkes night mist happy and contented.

Next month will see a slight change to the usual format of Elba Sessions Presents but that’s a different story for another day! Needless to say, we’re all pretty excited about the Christmas bonanza that we have planned for you all!

Photos by Steph Mulligan