Happy New Year! A new year and a new cover design for the monthly compilation CDs sent out to Friends of AUK (for a mere pittance in return). Unlike earlier years where the cover art remained the same but was presented in a variety of hues each month, here we stick to the one design, a steely blue, almost abstract, pic of two guitars. Of more significance, perhaps, we’ve realised that the blank space in the inside of the fold-over sleeves is ripe for printing on. Therefore, the January disc has a message from our Editor, Mark, welcoming subscribers to the new look CDs and apologising for the fact that the newsletter (or “monthly blurb” as he calls it), which was sent out along with the discs previously, is now discontinued. What letter? I presume that while some sort of monthly bulletin was sent along with the CD to subscribers. It certainly wasn’t sent to the poor staff writers; we just had to be happy with the discs.
Anyhow, the January disc has a welcoming message from Mark and from February onwards, there’s a brief synopsis of each track on the CD printed within the sleeve. A boon really for this column as it might help us to identify some of the acts featured, the ones who didn’t even achieve that 15 minutes of fame which Warhol had promised. In addition, there’s metadata embedded in the discs so that, on an appropriate CD player, the name of the song playing is displayed. Brave new world indeed.
We’ll return to the discs later, but January unfolds the result of our annual poll capturing the best of 2009. First up is the AUK writers’ top ten, which is as follows
- The Duke & the King “Nothing Gold Can Stay”
- Great Lake Swimmers “Lost Channels”
- Wilco “Wilco (The Album)
- Mumford & Sons “Sigh No More”
- Sam Baker “Cotton”
- Bill Callahan “Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle”
- Son Volt “American Central Dust”
- The Felice Brothers “Yonder is the Clock”
- Gurf Morlix “Last Exit Happy Land”
- Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit “Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit”
More importantly, there’s our readers’ top ten of 2009.
1 Richmond Fontaine – “We Used to Think The Freeway Sounded Like a River”
2 Felice Brothers “Yonder is the Clock”
3 Duke and the King “Nothing Gold Can Stay”
4 Low Anthem “Oh My God Charlie Darwin”
5 Wilco “Wilco (The Album)”
6 Magnolia Electric Co. “Josephine”
7 Sam Baker “Cotton”
8 Chuck Prophet “Let Freedom Ring”
9 Son Volt “American Central Dust”
10 Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit “Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit”
As for the other categories in the readers’ poll, here are the winners.
Band of the Year – Richmond Fontaine
Best Live Act – Duke and the King
Best Male Artist – Steve Earle
Best Female Artist – Neko Case
Best TV Show – The Wire
Best Movie -Inglourious Basterds
Best Radio Show- Bob Harris Saturday
Hero of the Year – Barack Obama
Villain of the Year – Simon Cowell
You can see the full list of all the runners-up here.
On the interviews front, in January Soren McGuire talked to David Lowery and Johnny Hickman of Cracker while there are also chats with Chris Wood (not the Traffic man, the UK folk singer), Caitlin Rose, Eric Taylor, Jace Everett, Rita Hosking, Sid Griffin, Chuck Prophet, Jason & The Scorchers, Allison Moorer, Mumford & Sons (!), John Hiatt and Cam Penner. Unfortunately, the interviews are not archived. There’s even less info regarding live reviews, as a search of the Wayback Machine fails to reveal any in the first months of 2010, likewise with news items, so, little to report on that front. There is archived our ever dependable Oliver Gray’s dispatch from the 2010 SXSW Festival. As ever, it’s a lengthy piece, not so much a music review, more of a travelogue with Gray coming across like a stranger in a strange land, searching for great gigs. You can read his review here.
Of the archived items, there are a couple of competitions open to readers. First off, an opportunity to win two Richmond Fontaine albums, their latest release “We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like a River” (our readers’ top album of 2009 as noted above), along with a limited edition release, “Postcard From Portland: Live At Dantes”. The winner was Les Brown. Next up were a brace of tickets for the 2010 Kilkenny Roots Festival, won by “Sarah.” I hope she enjoyed the shows. There’s also a banner promoting an opportunity to win the latest Wynntown Marshals album (presumably “Westerner”), although there’s no indication of who the lucky winner was.
It does seem that there were Gremlins in the AUK site in the early months of 2010, hence this slice of info from the editor.
Back to the discs then. Aside from the shiny new format we’ve got songs from well known acts such Jason & The Scorchers (with their first album in 14 years), Ray Wylie Hubbard, The Sadies, Danny & The Champs, Allison Moorer, Caitlin Rose, Trevor Moss & Hannah Lou, Ocean Colour Scene (?), Josh Rouse, Pokey Lafarge, Frightened Rabbit, Black Francis, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy, The Coal Porters (a fabulous rendition of Peter Rowan’s ‘Moonlight Midnight’) and Chuck Prophet. All well and good, but as is always the case, it’s a delight to find some golden nuggets amidst the host of less well remembered acts amidst the 80 tracks collected here. First off, there’s a sublime instrumental from Jack Rose, a guitarist who died in 2009, he was a connection between the experimentation of John Fahey and the new wave of bands such as Sonic Youth. Little Birdie, featuring Canadian Orit Shimoni, hover halfway amidst her fellow Canadians, The Cowboy Junkies and Mazzy Star. Another song which connects several sources is the (as described by Mark, the editor, in the new fangled liner notes) Dylan meets the Jesus And Mary Chain sounds of The Sister Ruby Band and Darker Dogs, a Bristol band, it seems, are quite spectral on ‘Song Of The Dead’.
We do have to give a mention to, possibly, the most unwieldy band name we’ve come across so far, namely, Tim And Sam Tim & The Sam Band With Tim And Sam, who pop up on the April disc. If you want to find out more about them, then Google’s your pal.
On then to the “hidden” songs tacked at the end of each disc. Preserving the mystery, the new inner sleeve track lists omit them, but we can reveal them here. January’s disc is graced by the wonderful tones of Clem Snide’s ‘Let’s Explode’, and it’s followed in February by the less fabulous (at least for this writer, sorry Mark) ‘Winter Song’ by Crash Test Dummies. Memories of Karl Wallinger are evoked as the March disc concludes with the rousing strains of World Party’s ‘Kingdom Come’ while the emotional walls come tumbling down when Sparklehorse’s ‘Hundreds Of Sparrows’ flutters from the speakers, closing the April disc barely a month after Mark Linkous’s tragic death.
You can still be a friend of Americana UK in this digital age, and amazingly, it’s now cheaper to do so than it was in 2010. All details here.
Vintage screenshots grabbed via The Wayback Machine.
Fortunately, my paper-based local partial archive tells me that on the Live Front in the first few months of 2010 we covered Peter Green & Friends, Carolina Chocolate Drops, Midlake, Laura Veirs, and Transatlantic Sessions.
There may have been others, but it’s only a partial archive 🙂