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Friday 6th April 2012
All Day BBQ Festival

Sparrow and the Workshop
6 Day Riot
The Nuns
Singing Adams
Y Niwl
Colours
Dignan Porch
+more tbc

The Windmill
Brixton
Price tbc

On Our iPod

Golden Grrrls - New Pop 7”

Chris Devotion & The Expectations - Amalgamation & Capital (album)

Trailer Trash Tracys - Ester (album)

Throwing Up - Mother Knows Best 7”

Howling Wolf - Complete Chess Masters 1951-60

The Ketamines - A Rotten Bond/1 Yr (from Oddbox Singles Club Pt 2)

Cardinal - Hymns (album)

Proper Ornaments - Taking the Gamble Out of Buying 12”

Darren Hayman - January Songs (album)

Various: Marshall Teller EP 12”

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Album Review

Various Artists
Be Yourself: A Tribute to Graham Nash's Songs For Beginners Grassroots Records

Article written by Ged M - Aug 8, 2010

Be Yourself: A Tribute to Graham Nash's Songs For Beginners

Graham Nash is the ex-Hollies Englishman who joined Crosby and Stills (plus Young, occasionally) to make the harmony-rich pop that is now such an influence on many indie-folk artists. Now this is the tribute of those bands to his 1971 solo debut, Songs For Beginners – interestingly they choose not just to record their favourite tracks, pointing to the quality of the whole album.

The artists involved include Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Vetiver, Alela Diane, Brendan Benson and Nash’s daughter Niles, among others. There’s a good mix of artists and the songs seem to stand up after 40 years, although there's a little variation in performance quality. Robin Pecknold, who lifted the whole CSN approach to harmony singing for Fleet Foxes, performs solo but with voice multi-layered to create his own harmonies on 'Be Yourself' while Sleepy Sun cover the angry ‘Chicago’ with its rallying call refrain: “we can change the world”. Although that feels a little idealistic now, it’s rooted in a faith in people, an anger about the status quo and a down to earth approach that was miles away from the sort of Californian hippy indulgence of some of his peers (and bandmates). The best track on the album, ‘Military Madness’, is a brilliant collaboration between Port O’Brien and Papercuts combining a gritty reality (the first words are: “in an upstairs room in Blackpool/ by the side of a Northern sea/ the army had my father/ and my mother was having me”) and an anti-war sentiment that feels just as relevant today. It’s also a perfect marriage of Van Pierszalowski's affecting vocals and Jason Quever's moody electronica.

Though some performances here are better than others, the quality of the songs and the intuitive, empathetic performances make this one of the finer sorts of tributes and a good advert for the original album.

Links:
http://www.grassrootsrecordco.com/be_yourself/index.html