Thursday 19 April 2012



R.I.P. Levon Helm

Friday 13 April 2012

Getting a batch of new albums through the post is a mixture of excitement and fear. The excitement comes from the hope that you will get something truly amazing to listen to and the fear is that you will have to find words to describe a handful of CDs that do nothing to move you.
This months is considerably better than average; an anthology of a folk great, an American rock band I've fallen in love with, a poppy indie act that has listened to too much Belle and Sebastian plus one I've not yet listened to and one released well outside of the six month cut off point.
What is disappointing though is that only two of the five have come with a press release. I may be doing the PR companies a disservice here and it maybe that my editor didn't send them. If that is the case he is a serial hoarder of press releases as this ratio holds good most months.
I would have thought that this was entry level stuff for a PR company and it is really not that hard. A single side of A4 will suffice with the following bits of information that will make my job easier.
  • Artist Name
  • Album Title
  • Label
  • Contact details (name/phone/email/web)
  • Brief Bio
  • RELEASE DATE!
Actually, scrub the bio just put the contact details and RELEASE DATE on a sticker and the album sleeve and leave it at that.
If I know the release date I will prioritise the batch; if the cardigan wearing ukele playing indie hipsters need listening to before those who wear proper clothes and play proper instruments then I will do it. If not, well, it is a bit like putting a three course meal in front of me and expecting me to eat the greens before the Swedish Glace with chocolate sauce.
I know that it is highly likely that all of this information is available online (probably in multiple locations) and I will read it before writing a couple of hundred words in either praise or condemnation but what I really want to do first is listen, not research and I'm always going to go for something that looks like it's got steel guitars rather than kazoos on it.

Update: 16 May 12

This month, four press releases, one stickered album, all due for release in between mid June and Mid July.  More importantly, after a first brief listen they sound prety good as well.