Dirty-haired pajama party

Okay, what is this? Has anyone been noticing what's going on? They're attacking us! Attacking us with songs and bombarding us with good music all over the place! Teasing us with their myriads of new or soon-to-be-released albums! What do Los Campesinos, The National, Islands, Johnny Foreigner, Land of Talk and that dude from TV On the Radio have in common? Yep, you guessed it: they all have a new album out soon and are shamelessly offering preview-songs from it to get us interested. The sheer amount of bands I love releasing new material in the next three months scares me out of my wits. There are expectations and hopes regarding each and every one of them. And there's just no time to readjust them now. It feels a bit like a crowd of shiny-happy-people just stormed into my house (knocking down the front door and forgetting to put the dog back in) demanding I have a party. They're nice, all pretty smiles and rosy cheeks and they bring music and champagne, and prettily-wrapped gifts too, it's not that. It's just that I wish I would have had time to wash my hair, get out of my pajamas - maybe even bake a cake - before they started forcing a party hat onto my head. But what the heck!You can't look a gift-horse in the mouth. A dirty-haired pajama party it is! Let's celebrate:

Dan Mangan - Robots

Bear in Heaven - Wholehearted Mess

 Rain Machine - Smiling Black Faces

Correatown - Valparaiso

Los Campesinos! - The Sea Is a Good Place to Think of the Future

Land of Talk - May You Never

Islands - Vapours

Allo Darlin' - Dear Stephen Hawking

Johnny Foreigner - Camp Kelly Calm

Illustrations made by Ward Zwart. Check out his stuff here.

Johnny Foreigner - Feels like Summer

Johnny Foreigner at Standon Calling last year

Yep, it's that time of the year again. Longer days, bookmarked festival websites (or, if you're attempting to go to any large UK festival: an early alarm, 2 hours of feverishly hitting refresh and a lot of nervous sweating, followed by stomach-knotting disappointment and an unreasonable feeling of hatred towards your computer), sniffling-sneezing, money-saving, house-cleaning, plan-making... yep, Summer's just down the road!

And what better way to celebrate this joyous fact then with a new Johnny Foreigner song!

Johnny Foreigner - Feels like Summer

Review: Standon Calling 2008

Standon Calling, it's held in the (beautiful) countryside about an hour outside London, it evolved from a birthday party, it's organised by the son of a Lord, it's limited to 2,500 visitors. How can it not be great?

Musical highlights:

Florence & the Machine, Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, Johnny Foreigner, Glasvegas, Los Campesinos!, Super Furry Animals, Benin City, The Mae-Shi, Music Sounds Better With You in the Love Hotel...

Other highlights: 

The location and scenery, the camp-site, the toilets (after experiencing toilets at other festivals, these were a revelation!), coconut and lemon cake (with coffee: a 'breakfast of champions') in the morning, the karaoke booth, the lanterns on the final night, the smell of the countryside, the fact that you could walk from your tent to any of the stages in about 2 minutes, the Master of Ceremonies (aka the dude with the cool beard) in the Lordship tent handing out shots of what was apparently a very fine whiskey, the Japanese theme and dress up on Saturday, the Love Hotel, the sun (when it came out), going weedleweedleweedle with our fingers behind our head during the SFA (you really had to be there to understand), picking apples from the trees near the manor, the bus stopping on the way to the site for people to use the cash machine, the carnival shop in Ware, chilli!, Los Campesinos! playing the opening of Pavement's 'Home', the taxi dude, the ride to Luton on Monday morning...

Lows: 

the weather on Sunday, the airport like bag search upon entry, Mystery Jets cancelling

All in all a HUGE thanks to the organisers for putting on an incredible weekend. See you next year!

 

Johnny Foreigner

  

  Glasvegas

  

The Love Hotel

  

Entering 'the Lordship'

You're looking for some mp3s aren't you..?!

Eh voila!:

Johnny Foreigner - The end and everything after

Los Campesinos! - We throw parties, you throw knives

Stardust - Music sounds better with you 

Glasvegas - Flowers and Football Tops

More pics here