The first Etta James song I remember hearing was “Tell Mama”, on Soul Jazz’s marvellous “Chicago Soul” compilation. I remember being dumbstruck by the force of her voice; how she could somehow combine being angry, pleading, triumphant, playful, lustful, and yearning, all within the space of a single song. Or sometimes even a single line of a song. Frankly, I was hooked. Etta James songs have featured on whatever iWhatsit device I’ve had in the past ten years, waiting for that moment to get transported to a whole new world. To me, she was the best soul singer out there; no-one had such emotion in their voice, no-one could be quite so goddamn, well, soulful.

She will be sadly missed, but her voice will live for ever.

MP3: Tell Mama by Etta James

Buy The Very Best Of Etta James: The Chess Singles

As I mentioned the other day, I get lots of emails. I don’t listen to many, sadly, and sometimes it takes something unusual to get noticed.

Calling yourself “Griggleschpot” might normally make me wince and move on, but something in the brevity and politeness of the email made me wander over to the Soundcloud link. And waiting there was some quite lovely, if slightly ominous electronica, in the vein of early Aphex Twin, or Boards Of Canada.

And that is really all I can say. Mr or Mrs or Ms or The Right Honorable or Dame or Sir Griggleschpot is somewhat lacking in personal detail, other than describing their debut album as “this album called seaeyesair works backwards in time and narrates drastic transitions therewith”. And that “I was born in 1993, I live an hour-long train journey from London – on the coastline.”. Other than a nice photo, that’s your lot. Nothing quite like letting your music do the talking.

Which it does, in an entirely pleasant, understated way. The album is free to download from here, and I recommend you do, on the strength of these tracks. Intriguing.

As a music blogger, even one on the dusty edges of the blogosphere¹, you have to get used to getting a lot of PR mails. And I mean lots. I get around 30 a day, and I know many bloggers who get up to ten times that. Picking music you might want to listen to can be a tough affair, especially when many of the emails are just basic mass-mailings, with no thought at all about what kind of music you clearly like. No, I am not interested in a mash-up of Lady Gaga and Rhianna. When the email has been written by someone, and it’s usually the band in this case, that has clearly read your blog, then there’s a much higher chance that you’re going to give the music a listen.

One Of These People Is A Gooner

Which leads me to Town Hall. I had an email from them the other day, saying they’d enjoyed my posts on a couple of artists, and then saying their drummer is a huge Arsenal fan. That’s me won over then. Hailing from New York, armed with mandolins and the like, they make experimental folk. In previous years might have made me run the other way fearing a bunch of beardy hurdy-gurdy botherers yelping about Scarborough on acid, but as we all know, folk’s been where it’s at for a while, and, once you get through this interminably long sentence and listen to some of their songs, you’ll realise they’ve written songs of quite startling loveliness, like “Just Watching My Breath”:

“Alright” takes the psych-folk of Grizzly Bear and makes tricksy time signatures, the Lydian mode and odd breakdowns a charming listen:

You know what? Despite getting a million and one emails a day, and the incipient guilty feelings of not listening to 99% of them, I’m glad PR and bands make the effort when you get to hear stuff like this.

The band have a Bandcamp here where you can buy their first EP “Sticky Notes and Paper Scraps”, and check out their website filled with photos and stuff here. I look forward to hearing more from them over the year.

¹ Or whatever it’s called this week