Saturday 19 August 2017

Fantasy Festival #6: The Pop Festival - Lineup

Grace Mitchell: Grace Mitchell is a singer/songwriter from Portland, Oregon. Paul Lester as The Guardian's New Band Of The Day/Week guru got very excited about her song, 'Jitter' in 2015. She's signed to Taylor Swift and Lorde's label, and makes what I'd call smart pop that takes from a number of genres, but mainly R&B, electronica and rock. Grace has been touring the US and Canada throughout August.

Marika Hackman: Marika Hackman is a British singer/songwriter and multi instrumentalist whose second album, I'm Not Your Man, was released in June.  The lead single, 'Boyfriend' is a swaggering indie pop tale of a female/female/male love triangle becoming increasingly complicated. She will be playing at Leeds Festival on the 25th August and will be touring the UK into the autumn.

Jane Weaver: Jane Weaver first appeared on the Manchester music scene in the mid nineties with her band Kill Laura, a scouse indie pop outfit signed to Rob Gretton's Manchester Records. She later popped up as one of Misty Dixon on the Twisted Nerve label, but it's been her solo work that has won her, at long last, critical acclaim, with its exploration of psych and space pop. Her album Modern Kosmology was released in May, and she is playing the Liverpool Psych Festival at the end of September. She is currently touring the UK.

Stealing Sheep: Liverpool band Stealing Sheep started life as a folk troubadour outfit, releasing two albums of curiously mediaeval sounding folk, Noah and the Paper Moon and Into The Diamond Sun. Their third album, Not Real, released in 2015, revealed their smooth transition to psych pop. The band are not currently touring.

Santigold: Santigold, aka Santi White, is a singer/songwriter and producer from Philadelphia. She has released three albums of immaculate electro pop, of which 2016's 99cents is the most recent. The glitchyness of some of her work, and her sometimes vocal delivery, have led to comparisons with MIA, but her music is ultimately a collage of all sorts of sonic sources: Everything from modern dance music to post punk samples, to ska and Two Tone. She is not currently touring.

Solange: Solange Knowles' 2016 album A Seat At The Table was one of the standout albums of 2016, a poetic mediation on what it is to be a black woman in the US, but also a lively, imaginative, danceable and moving work of art. She played Glastonbury in June and  is currently touring the US.

Lorde: Auckland pop star Lorde, real name Ella Marija Lani Yelich-O'Connor, first began to garner attention in 2012, with her self released EP, The Love Club. A year later she released her second, immaculately written and produced, EP, Tennis Court, and debut album Pure Heroine, which featured the single 'White Teeth Teens'. An exponent of knowing, smart, observational minimalist pop, there is a world weariness to her voice and lyrics that contrasts sharply with her age: She is 21 this year. Her second album, Melodrama, was released in 2016. She is in the middle of a huge international tour at the moment, which will bring her to the UK in September. 


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