LTW newsletter 91

Hello warriors,

Sorry about the delay in communication - I’m on my spoken word tour of Ireland, so my time is bent into interesting new shapes, and trying to keep up with stuff has been tricky!

I am writing to you from Fermoy, a small town on the banks of the River Kent, twenty miles north of Cork. I have a day off, so the venue has put me up. It's an amazing space—a converted old convent on the outskirts of the town that is being turned into an art space and venue. I hope they make this work, as it has lots of potential.

It’s always great coming to Ireland - I've been coming here for nearly 40 years, touring and doing events, and I have been all over the Emerald Isle. The first date on this current spoken word tour was in Kilkenny, and I had forgotten that we had played there in 1986! After the gig the promoter put us up at his house - a part time bed and breakfast near town. The  place served up the biggest breakfast ever - it was legendary in our world - it turns out that the people we stayed with’s mother who cooked it is 92 now and was in the venue I just performed in earlier that afternoon - I love the way things can go full circle!

After decades.

Speaking of which, apart from another week of touring Ireland…(dates below)…there has been much music action in the past few days.

There has been much excitement in the backcombed or even bat-combed world of Gotherama, with the Cure dropping heavy hints that their magnum opus, which has been ten years in the making, may be about to be released.

The band, who wonderfully work at their own pace and with their own agenda, has been fine-tuning the new album for years. Fans who had almost given up hope of it ever being released can suddenly glimpse it just over the horizon, and it seems to be on its way, perhaps in November.

The continuing fallout of the Oasis reformation continues with all sorts of online comments on everything from whether people like their music or not to whether they are responsible for the loss of some small venues to maybe they have caused the impending apocalypse. There is also plenty of flak about ticket pricing - which is a fair comment but dynamic pricing was not invented by the band and has been industry standard for years.

That doesn't make it a good thing, and perhaps what is good about the sheer scale of Oasis has brought this to the public's attention and now even into the Houses of Parliament. Louder Than War is currently working with MPs to at least clarify this system so people are not held online for hours buying tickets that suddenly change price—at least at the beginning of the process, people should be informed of what they are letting themselves in for.

One of our albums of the week comes from Manchester band Ist Ist, who have tapped into the city's more melancholic side for their last few albums and have built up a big cult following.  They are now making sense of this with their new album that sees them perfectly blend the balance of their perfect underground melancholia and an arena pop - could they have found the alchemy to create a Mancunian Killers? After all, the Killers were a Las Vegas Mancunian band…!

The rigours of touring have broken many a band over the years. The more precarious and volatile the band, often the greater their music but the flipside of that coin it is also often the bigger the almost inevitable bust up. The onstage tete-a-tete of Jane Addiction was a shock to many people, with the band literally imploding in age. We hope they can get this sorted - even if just to keep the magnificent Love and Rockets, who have been their special guests on the tour on the road with them.

We have been falling in love this week with flamboyant Irish chanteuse - the queen of the Edinburgh Fringe and actress Camille O’Sullivan, who offers love letters to dead friends and her heroes by totally reinventing some of their greatest hits.

It's always great to have Beth Ditto back…Her band, Gossip know how to give great shows, and their flamboyant post-punk disco is always one of the best parties in town. Ditto fills the breaks between the fab songs with her monologues where she talks to audience members by name, checks on ones who are getting jostled, and apologises to nephews for swearing. She is a heady mix of carey, sweary, Arkansassy, self-deprecation and the queen of the angular glitter ball.

louderthanwar.com/gossip-eventim-liverpool-olympia-live-review/ (S'ouvre dans une nouvelle fenêtre)

American singer-songwriter and two-time Grammy award-winning Rickie Lee Jones popped into Manchester and performed an intimate and beautiful show at The Stoller Hall.

Wam Bam Birmingham! The most cutting of cutting edge festivals - Supersonic Festival - returned for its annual celebration of the eclectic with a typically stunning bill of music that keeps you both intrigued and guessing.

The best new apocalyptic art-rock band in the UK, Erotic Secrets of Pompeii have been gigging hard around the country impressing and confusing everyone at gigs and festivals (Rebellion and Shambala) alike. Their album would have won the Mercury Prize if they’d entered, but it’s time for new material. A stand alone song and video which sees them enter a new phase of weirdness and utter brilliance, says Ged Babey.