It’s five minutes since I got off the train. I’m sitting in a brilliant pub, where a beer festival has just begun, with a drink of something delicious. And I’m in a conversation about the Orkney Islands. Then I finish dreaming, wake up and go on tour, and that’s exactly how it begins. It’s Bristol. Kevin Moseley has offered to pick me up from Temple … Continue reading Bristol: city of dreams and songs about football
Hello! I’ve just got home from the first two gigs of my tour, in Bristol and London. They were brilliant; I’ll write something more about them later. But for now – before I head on to Birmingham on Thursday – here’s a look ahead to the three shows I’m playing this weekend. Saturday 5 October: Nottingham I would say Nottingham is a second home to me, … Continue reading Tour preview pt2: Two gigs in one day!
In just a few days I’ll be setting off for my first ever solo headline tour. Like everything I do, it looks sort of dissipated and desultory. Three or four of the gigs I was hoping to get organised ended up not happening. So there are only six gigs, in five cities, across nine days. Like everything I do, it’s gonna be sparkly. I’m really … Continue reading A Tour of Two Halves
As some of you know – and as The Glass Delusion explains – I’m not the best at blowing my own trumpet. Self-promotion comes as naturally to me as ballet to a walrus. It’s a good job I’m not one of those hip-hoppers that the young people have now. Between my aversion to self-aggrandisement and the relative absence in my life of platinum discs, fast … Continue reading Reviews and videos from Indietracks
There’s a bit in a Daniel Kitson show where he’s talking about sitting in his car at a junction, waiting behind another car. The indicators on the two cars are blinking, out of phase with each other. But then the indicators fall into sync, and the two sets of little lights pulsate together, just for a second or two, before they diverge again. And just … Continue reading Indietracks, synchronicity, and the first pint of the day
[Skip the spiel: listen or buy now] Certainty can make great anthemic pop songs. You can dance to certainty. It is a Good Thing. Doubt can make music that’s more nuanced and, some might say, more interesting. You can’t dance to doubt. But right now I don’t feel like dancing. Since around 2010 a lot has changed for the worse. All right-thinking folk have been … Continue reading My album The Glass Delusion is available now!
As I’ve mentioned here previously, I don’t much care for the notion of an ‘Indietracks warm-up’. This is the term widely given to any UK indiepop gig in the run-up to the Indietracks festival. Somehow it suggests to me that the artists are just using it as a practice for the big one. I’m sure the people using the term don’t mean it this way, … Continue reading The Road to Indietracks
As you may have already seen – particularly if you follow me on Twitter, where my blathering about it is particularly intense – the big news around here is that I am playing this year’s Indietracks festival in a month’s time. Eeeeeeeeeee! My slot is yet to be confirmed but it is likely that I’ll be playing proper acoustic on the train. Eeeeeeeeee again! Me … Continue reading Eeeeeeeeeee, I’m on at Indietracks!
So I played Acoustic Loveliness at the Closed Shop last week. The music happens in the main bit of the pub – it’s not a nice, tucked-away little room like we have at the Rutland Arms. So there was a lot of background noise. My first two songs went down a treat but then I tried to play ‘Pilot Light’ and ‘The Glass Delusion’ and … Continue reading Little moments of woo
Through the miracle of the Anorak forum I have just discovered ‘The Ballad of Paul Tierney‘ by Lonely Tourist. It’s a pretty nice song. And it’s about a footballer. As some of you will know, I wrote and released ‘The Ballad of Phil Jevons‘ a few years ago. You’ll have to decide for yourself whether it, also, is a pretty nice song. But it is … Continue reading Footballer ballads: a new micro-genre
Pete Green 