Monthly Archive for July, 2009

[lyg10] whether it’s me that does the leaving, or the love that flies away;

Published on July 31, 2009 in [lyg10] and a little more personal. 2 Comments Tags: edinburgh, friends, scummerfield, university, [lyg10].

September this year marks ten years since I made my first, tentative and over-sharey, foray into blogging. I hope you’ll forgive a little self-indulgence on my part, but I’d like to do something to celebrate a pretty significant milestone. I’ve hit upon the idea of publishing some selected takes from my archives – there’s a little bit of poetic license required here, as some of the proper cringeworthy teenage stuff is (thankfully) lost in the mists and pixels of cyberspace, but what I’ll publish every Friday from here until the end of the year is culled from the LiveJournal years, 2003-2006.

In early August, I was getting ready to move to Edinburgh and begin my postgraduate degree. What follows is one of many introspective diary entries around that time – pretty funny when you consider how that particular adventure turned out.

5th August 2003
I’m waiting on the supermarket to call and see if they will give me a job. It seems pretty hopeful. Perhaps when my boss called them she told them all of the true things that are nice and none of the true things that are not so. And why wouldn’t she, the woman who grabbed and hugged me in the work toilets on Friday afternoon, telling me she took one look at the kiosk that morning and said to herself she’s back? A talent for selling cigarettes is a key transferable skill dontchaknow, especially now they’re talking about those patronising and graphic pictorial health warnings. A customer last week told me, “”Have you no consideration for this store? Do you know how much money they’re going to lose with you gone?”"

Going for a transfer with the company I’ve worked for since I was seventeen (back when I started off on £2.67 an hour) wasn’t my idea, but it would have been one of my better ones. I daresay I could have found another job fairly quickly, but I’d be starting somewhere new from scratch. Perhaps the hours wouldn’t suit. And in all likelihood I probably would have ended up here. It’s the same store (easy work that I’m good at, decent pay, customers to talk to), and it’s three streets away from my student flat. What more would I need?

I like the feeling that I’m getting things moving – immerse yourself in the news a letter received while I was on holiday suggested, and I comply by reading broadsheets in the work canteen (to the faint disbelief of all and sundry) and crushing on Krishnan Guru-Murthy on Channel Four News. Perhaps I’ll have an east coast job by Friday. Next week I go shopping for dishes and Barbie bedcovers.

As ever, action (and the odd migraine when I feel like taking a break) to hide the fact that I am fucking terrified.

I don’t want to move to another city; so much so I’m trying to block out the good vibes I got about the course and the place and the indifferent vibes I got about the similar course on this side of the country. All I’m remembering, until I hit myself and try to clear my brain, is a little girl who cries when she sees “”Glasgow”" on departure boards in foreign airports and who pressed her nose against an aeroplane window trying to see her house from the sky.

Yes, last week.

I’m ridiculously in love with this city – mine by adoption, four years of university and a fifteen-minute train ride. I love knowing where everything is, yet still discovering new things in conversation and almost by accident, like the cathedral or the amazing little shops at Kings Court. I love laughing at the gawths sweltering in their hoodies in the middle of July outside the Art Gallery, despite or perhaps because I know if such things had been socially acceptable when I was fourteen I would have been a likely candidate. I love getting chatted up by drunks on the train. I love that we get all the best gigs (yay, Bright Eyes tonight!) I love that everywhere I look is somewhere or something to remind me of when I was happiest.

It’s not like I’ve never had to say goodbye before, but it’s different when it’s me doing the leaving. On the one hand it’s an adventure on my own that I probably need, but on the other there will be so many things that I will miss. Sarah having her baby. Talking about pretty boys til the wee small hours with my sister. Phonecalls that either end in “do you want me to come over” or running into the other party in the street. My brother getting home at ten o’clock at night and announcing that the two of us are going to the pub or the cinema, I’ve got five minutes to get off the computer and pretty myself up. Friday morning coffee dates. The girls at work, who make me laugh and drive me mad and after a week or so won’t miss me at all.

Ten months from now though, I bet I won’t want to come home.

a to z: the original leonard cohen version;

Published on July 30, 2009 in music and photography. 5 Comments Tags: 365days, A to Z, emmy the great, first love, mp3s.

This entry is part 11 of 25 in the series A to Z

I’m quite proud of what I’ve come up with so far on this little series of pictures, so I’m going to attempt a little bit of mp3 blogging/self-portrait crossover based around a current music-related sub-project within a project. Follow that if you will, or just download the songs and tell me I’m pretty

No story as such for this photo, just one of my songs of the year thus far.

DOWNLOAD: Emmy The Great – First Love [YSI]
BUY: First Love at Amazon.co.uk

ten artists: rem;

Published on July 29, 2009 in music. 8 Comments Tags: rem, ten artists.

This entry is part 4 of 6 in the series ten artists

Time for a new series, this one involving actual writing and inspired by two of my favourite music boys. Scott, whose Wack Beats ruminations on music and film are frequently more entertaining than the subject matter, has been working on a list he’s calling The Forty Artists That Shaped Me. While I don’t have as many as forty (that I love, sure, but that changed my life?), I really liked the idea… and then Steve pointed out that I never followed up on his Ten Albums To Tell Someone Who You Are.

So here’s my compromise: ten artists that shaped me, and quite possibly the albums they did it with.

Those of my kind are usually able to point to one artist, one song, one incident, which changed them from somebody who likes music to somebody who likes music, you know, obsesses over every lyric, collects the bootlegs and the ticket stubs, chases bands across the country and can born their friends rigid with a not-always-appropriate reference for every occasion. For me, that song was “Country Feedback” and that band were REM.

Let me set the scene: in 1998 I was studying for my Standard Grades and sleeping on the sofa in the front room at my dad’s old flat; dividing my waking hours between past papers and episodes of Star Trek: Voyager, and investigating the piles of shiny, alphabetised CDs in the black lacquer cabinet by my makeshift bed. It’s easiest to describe my dad’s tastes as “eclectic”, and although he has his favourites he’s usually happy to give anything a listen: unfortunately this means that he came back from Las Vegas a few weeks ago singing the praises of The Fucking Killers, but in the late 90s I was happy to discover several artists who would later go on to become staples of my music collection. The hi-fi was conveniently positioned by the sofa and he had a pair of those huge, cushioned headphones that make you feel like a DJ; and once he’d gone to bed I’d often hit the “play” button and let Leonard Cohen or somebody sing me to sleep.

He’s a “song” man rather than an “album” man, my dad, and one of the favourites which always cropped up on those mixtapes of his I’ve written about before was “Losing My Religion” from REM’s Out Of Time album (a song that would later become a harmonised karaoke standard for myself and my brother as well as convincing him to buy a mandolin, but I digress). I’d run my finger over the smooth, even spines of the discs and select study music based on a vague familiarity with the names and contents within. I smiled along to “Radio Song” with its KRS-One rap intro, and to “Shiny Happy People”, but the sheer depth and melancholy beauty of “Country Feedback” floored me. I hadn’t yet realised that music didn’t just soundtrack or entertain, but that it could swell up inside you and bring involuntary tears.

REM were the first band I “collected” the way I used to collect badges or trolls. As I started to grow my own music collection, I wanted every album. I spent my holiday money on special editions of Dead Letter Office and Document that I found in a shopping centre in Malaga, and my first boyfriend bought me Life’s Rich Pageant for my eighteenth birthday. I wore out my cassette tape copy of my favourite album, the hugely underrated Life’s Rich Pageant, and replaced it for £3 from Fopp on Byres Road the day I found out that I had aced my Highers and, by extension, had a place at law school. I spent the rest of the summer listening to the album on an ancient tape deck at my Grandad’s, memorising every word.

As the years have passed I’ve moved away from listening to their albums regularly (a quick check shows I currently have 76 of their songs in my iTunes library) but it hardly seems to matter. I’ve seen them live three times now, the most recently being at last summer’s T in the Park, and every time I see Michael Stipe in his makeup or Peter Buck’s solid presence my heart skips like it did when I was a teenager and I remember why it was that for years I breathlessly called them my favourite band. The post-Bill Berry material might not excite me as much as the scratchy, mumbled lyrics of their early records, but the albums are there to be revisited whenever I need them.

And here’s a spectacular live version of the song that started it all.

DOWNLOAD: REM – Country Feedback [YSI]
BUY: Out of Time
New Adventures in Hi-Fi
In Time: The Best of REM 1988 – 2003 at Amazon.co.uk

in pictures: glasgow river festival 2009;

Published on July 28, 2009 in photography. 6 Comments Tags: glasgow, glasgow river festival, photography.

More photos here.

new music mondays: richmond fontaine;

Published on July 27, 2009 in music. 4 Comments Tags: album reviews, richmond fontaine, we used to think the freeway sounded like a river.

I’m lying on the floor, listening to records, the cool of the hard wood against my spine and the sound reverbrating through my huge, cushioned headphones. As I listen, I daydream: of deserts and telephone wires, wind and space and open-top cars, diners and sad-looking casinos shot on kodachrome film. I wish, not for the first time, that I could find some way to do this full-time and still make rent.

I suspect that, if ever a band existed to be listened to on vinyl, it would be Richmond Fontaine. The timeless feel and the warmth of the format fits frontman Willy Vlautin’s songwriting style perfectly, and breathes life into his unlikely cast of characters. A talented novellist in his own right, Vlautin’s songs are more short stories than barroom anthems.

We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River, the band’s forthcoming eighth album, unfolds like a sleepy road and is perhaps even less immediate than previous releases. Dreamy interludes, a snatched breath of watch out, or your heart will be nothing but scars sound from far away, like through a broken transistor radio, between warm vignettes and snapshots into the lives of Vlautin’s unlikely characters. It’s an ongoing theme of his: dreamers trapped in desperate, ordinary lives, creating their own universes and escaping into books, liquor or the collected works of Paul Newman. The couple in the album’s title – and opening – track seem almost childlike as they sneak into an abandoned house and broken swimming pool if it wasn’t for the fact that they had a car.

These are the tales of the desperate, the lonely, who sneak in the tiny details of the bar-room storyteller. She said she wasn’t used to drinking, but I could tell she was, a desperate party to an unfortunate affair tries to excuse himself in “The Boyfriends”, pleading I ain’t like that! “43″ is a dark, dirty song about the death throes of an abusive relationship, and the protagonist of “The Pull” retreats from the world suddenly – leaves his girlfriend, stops talking and creates a new life for himself between the gym and a mattress on a dirty floor.

There are bright moments in here too: “You Can Move Back Here” is the ideal choice for a lead single, and “Maybe We Were Both Born Blue” is almost defiant. And in “Ruby and Lou” we find Post to Wire‘s broken hearts reborn. The whole world might be cursed, she says, but it’s hard to believe when we’re together.

“A Letter To The Patron Saint of Nurses” concludes the album and, despite the musical backdrop, it’s no more a song than the short story that accompanies the single release. Haunting and simple, Vlautin’s voice stays with you long after the record fades out.

We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River is out on 17th August. Single “You Can Move Back Here” on screen-printed 7″, limited to 500 copies, is released today.

BUY: You Can Move Back Here at Rough Trade.
PREORDER: We Used to Think the Freeway Sounded Like a River at Amazon.co.uk

brand new july: last month’s mix, july 2009;

Published on July 25, 2009 in music. 1 Comment Tags: art of the mix, glasgow, monthly mix club, monthly most played.

This entry is part 3 of 28 in the series monthly mix club

One of my favourite websites has always been Art of the Mix, a community site based on sharing and exchanging playlists. In recent months the site has been so unreliable – buggy and prone to crashing, and often blocked as “unsecure” on Firefox as a result of a hack. I was going to open this post by announcing I’d signed up to a new, similar site which one of the old AoTM community had recommended to me, but in the course of writing this I’ve discovered that the original and best music mix site is back online with a shiny new redesign (and an unfortunately irritating menu bar thing going on).

Which, I think, means I have a few monthly mixes to catch up on.

It’s been such a gorgeous day today, and I walked most of the way back from town via the Glasgow River Festival. There’s no better place in the world than this city when the sun shines, although my toasty shoulders might disagree.

It Doesn’t Have To Be Beautiful: last month’s mix, July 2009
1. Mirah: “Generosity”
2. The Broken Family Band: “Salivating”
3. Patterson Hood: “I Understand Now”
4. Alela Diane: “White As Diamonds”
5. Two Cow Garage: “Brand New July”
6. Malcolm Middleton & The Hold Steady: “Run To You” [live]
7. Withered Hand: “Religious Songs”
8. Lisa Mitchell: “Clean White Love”
9. Regina Spektor: “Laughing With”
10. Richmond Fontaine: “We Used To Think The Freeway Sounded Like A River”
11. The National & St. Vincent: “Sleep All Summer”
12. Josh Ritter: “The River” [live Springsteen cover]
13. Blind Pilot: “Paint Or Pollen”
14. Slow Club: “It Doesn’t Have To Be Beautiful”
15. Emmy The Great: “We Are Safe”

[ZIPPED .MP3S, LEFT CLICK AND SAVE]

Monthly Most Played after the jump.

Continue reading ‘brand new july: last month’s mix, july 2009;’

[lyg10] monologue in two parts;

Published on July 24, 2009 in [lyg10] and travellin'. 5 Comments Tags: spain, travels, [lyg10].

I wrote this when taking a flight on my own was still a luxury, in a brand-new gorgeous spiral-ring notebook I bought in Malaga airport when I was 21. It’s funny to think about now, given how far I’ve traveled on my own and how often, but still nothing gets me writing more easily.

And my mother, brother and sister are flying out to Spain today.

27th July 2003
3:50pm (Spanish time)
In a stuffy plane, sitting on the runway at Malaga airport (and have been for some time). I’ve changed seats so that a small boy can sit with his mother and her friend, relieved to give up a window seat for a less claustrophobic aisle one – a sure sign of age. To my left, a stylish brown-skinned girl is playing cards with her boyfriend. She speaks English, and sometimes Spanish, but her accent is… French maybe? His, on the other hand, is most definitely Australian. Behind me, a painfully middle-class Englishman complains about the delay to his wife. “At least they’re not babies,” he says, indicating his son who has already finished the lollipop that was supposed to help relieve the pressure in his ears during take-off. But what children! The adorable little girl of the family seated directly behind me gets my attention by kicking my seat, and returns my stuck-out tongue. In front of me are a group of giggling, wriggling, Spanish schoolgirls (who go on to charm us throughout the flight with their broken English) – I assume they are on a trip of some sort to London, the young man I spotted with them in the airport patrolling the plane every so often with his little bag bearing the legend “Holy Cross English Language School”.

And so my two weeks being home alone (one until my brother returns I suppose, but I’m still calling Mum’s double bed leaving mine to my army of cuddly toys a little longer) begins with delays, me cursing my need to be early which has led to hours spent so far in the airport and wondering just what the Spanish put in their cheeseburgers cause that sure as hell don’t taste like home. The plane trundles to the runway then stops again, as if mocking a girl who senses the time she had for a leisurely cappuccino and locating this week’s NME and her connecting flight disappearing. As the engines roar before the familiar pressure, lurch and momentary feeling of weightlessness that signifies us finally getting off the ground, I know it will be a mad dash to Terminal 1.

One hour and forty-five minutes behind schedule. The stylish girl’s other half is taking pictures through the portholes of windows with a digital camera. I’m saying a Hail Mary for a safeandpleasantjourney and making a good Act of Contrition under my breath since my mother isn’t here to do it for me and who am I to tempt fate, but knowing that all those miles below I still merit a poolside Rosary. Dehydrated, on half-an-hour’s sleep thanks to an ill-advised karaoke session last night (“”But you’re going home tomorrow,”" I hear my brother’s voice in my head, “”you must come out”", neglecting to inform me he’ll be ignoring us throughout the night to chat up the girls at the next table) and fighting nausea, I almost have to reach for the paper sick bag as we hit a patch of turbulence.

The couple are holding hands now, playing with each other’s fingers. I fight back my jealousy and get back to trying to discover if The Wasp Factory actually has a plot (verdict: no, but I like it for some reason nonetheless).

9:21pm (Scottish time)
I arrived at Heathrow with fifteen minutes to spare, raced through miles of corridor, passport control, stuck my tongue out at the Steve-alike manning those X-ray archway thingys I’m always terrified to go through (on second thoughts maybe that’s why I got frisked just like on TV, as if there was any room to conceal a gun in my chancing-it size ten vest top) and arrived at Gate 5 to find… my Glasgow connection was delayed. Well! I hadn’t been so glad of a delay since… since my last time at this very gate in fact, on this very route, back in January when Lola and I braved London transport in the snow in a desperate bid to get me home. I remember I passed the time then with a panini, a freshly-squeezed orange juice and a copy of the Herald, taking calls from my editor at the student newspaper on my mobile and looking every inch the young professional (you can’t notice the Hello Kitty phone cover unless you’re right up close). No such luck this time in my long shorts, back proudly bearing a nine Euro henna-ed butterfly where a faerie girl with blue wings of a slightly more permanent nature will one day reside if I ever grow a fucking spine. I have a serious cold by this time too, doubtless not helped by the fact my snuggly cream cardigan is hanging in a Spanish apartment wardrobe, perhaps swaying mockingly to the whims of the air conditioning.

With a little time to kill I thought I’d buy a newspaper – sadly not in my capacity as a journalist-in-training but so I’d have a TV paper for the week. No Scotland on Sundays in sight I plump for the Sunday Times – no NME either, fuck it, I’m only missing the Coral, I picked up The Face instead and I doubt anyone who’s seen those Eliza pictures could blame me – and then it hits me after I’ve paid and found the pile of Scotland on Sundays, what good are English TV listings to me? Good thing I don’t actually watch TV.

And so I got off the plane at Glasgow, wearied, nauseated, cold, to be greeted with my mother in warmer climes serenading my voicemail and my dad offering a lift – and bringing food. And then the best part of a holiday – coming home to all that mail! Hmmm… bank statement, VISA bill, offer of new VISA card, offer of thirty day free contact lens trial, letter from my new university… and what’s this? Lipgloss?

As someone whose name I will pretend not to remember once sang, it’s good to be back.

a to z: i’ll take two of what you’re having;

Published on July 22, 2009 in music and photography. 6 Comments Tags: 365days, A to Z, drive-by truckers, goddamn lonely love, mp3s.

This entry is part 12 of 25 in the series A to Z

181. I'll Take Two Of What You're Having

Since content has been a little thin on the ground recently, and I’m quite proud of what I’ve come up with so far on this little series of pictures, I’m going to attempt a little bit of mp3 blogging/self-portrait crossover based around a current music-related sub-project within a project.

Actually, I’ve not been doing too badly on the blogging front lately, but I’d planned another “ten artists” post tonight before time and circumstance got the better of me. But, given what was decided tonight, there really wasn’t a more appropriate time to post my “D” photo.

I didn’t decide on my contribution to this project-within-a-project until fairly late on. I’d had the Drive-By Truckers swimming around in my head all day, but I didn’t think this song (perhaps my favourite of theirs) was entirely appropriate. But then, I realised that I have a story for every occasion and my timing for this one couldn’t be much better.

I took this photo on 30th June. Three years to the next day, I met a boy in a train station. He was somebody I’d been chatting to online and on the phone a lot; a whole bunch of in-jokes and shooting the shit about music. It was warm. We had ice cream. And by the end of the weekend, our lives would be changed forever.

You can roll your eyes at the hyperbole, but we’re getting married next year, so sucks to be you.

So this one goes out, I guess, to anybody who’s ever been in a long-distance relationship. We only managed it for like three months so you guys are my heroes.

And, venue confirmation email permitting, we’ll be telling it like it is four years to the day that we met.

DOWNLOAD:Drive-By Truckers – Goddamn Lonely Love [YSI]
BUY: The Dirty South at Amazon.co.uk

isn’t grey hair just the first light of a new dawn;

Published on July 21, 2009 in music. 6 Comments Tags: drive carefully, how to swim, jam on bread, live reviews, mat riviere, withered hand.

Saturday was the third birthday of local monthly indie night Drive Carefully, and they celebrated in some style – with one of the best lineups they’ve ever put on. The non-profit collective have always prided themselves on presenting a diverse showcase of the very best independent music from both Scotland and further afield, and it was great to see such a big crowd in the 13th Note’s tiny basement – even if it meant we were all boiling over.

A late addition to the lineup, first act Mat Riviere was an interesting choice of opener. His music was the sound of one man’s primal scream in the privacy of his own bedroom – all red and sweat and synth and veins and spit. Protracted, messy and not the most obvious thing you’d expect me to be listening to on a Saturday night – and yet, for all of that, strangely compelling.

How to Swim couldn’t be more different. Trumpet and tambourine combine with a brace of guitars and whimsical harmonies to produce an almost big band-like sound, in more senses than the one that pits a six-member band against a tiny 13th Note stage. It’s catchy, immediate and sounds a little like liquorice allsorts, which I suspect is why I spot a couple of forty-somethings dancing their way into the toilets. But the basement is like a sauna as usual, and there’s only so long I can listen to the charming cacophony before I need to take refuge and find oxygen on the staircase.

Next up was the sort of genius it’s not really possible to put into words. The artist who called himself Jam On Bread wasn’t really much to look at: a wee beardy chap in a cardigan and Los Campesinos t-shirt and playing songs about wishing he was a manatee and looking up swine flu symptoms on Wikipedia on a ukelele. You thin it’s sounds naff, don’t you? Well, your loss. “I wrote this for my girlfriend, but then she dumped me,” he introduced a whimsical lovesong to the line of us sat on the floor, enraptured. “But I’ve got a new girlfriend now, so that’s ok.”

Although the crowd thinned out a little after that, Withered Hand was for me at least the night’s main attraction. Disheveled and a little delirious, Dan Wilson is easily the east coast’s best-kept secret at the moment. The songs which make up his two (spell-binding) EPs manage to be at once beautiful and profane, like a folk-infused Aidan Moffat. Later joined by two female friends on backing vocals and cello, his “Religious Songs” takes on, if you forgive the comparison, the status of a fucked-up hymn as eyes of the girls in the front row mist over and they sing their lungs out.

Drive Carefully’s next show is on 15th August, at the Note as usual. It’s their annual charity night, this time in aid of Enable Scotland, with the Secondhand Marching Band and Over the Wall. You should go, you know.

new music mondays: lisa mitchell;

Published on July 20, 2009 in music. 8 Comments Tags: album reviews, contests, lisa mitchell, wonder.

Another new feature, in which I remember when you buy CDs (or, worse – when people send you them) you really ought to write about them if you happen to write a music blog.

I’ve always secretly suspected that winning a televised talent contest is the worst thing that can happen to you if you fancy your chances as a professional musician. Sure, there are the odd Girls Alouds and Leona Lewises, but in the contemporary age of Saturday night light entertainment last week’s fastest selling debut single becomes tomorrow’s Celebrity Big Brother nonentity. The winner of such shows tends to be able to exert little control over the end product, and ultimately sinks into obscurity after the second single barely charts.

But to have been runner-up: now there’s how to play it. If one’s eviction from the show seemed unjustified, you’re likely to have a ready-made mailing list in the shape of a Facebook group create itself in a frenzy (I’m looking at you, Bolton’s Own Laura White, and your constant status updates). Geography preventing me from having been an avid viewer of Australian Idol, I couldn’t say for sure how Lisa Mitchell’s story played out – but there’s something about her haunting vocal style that doesn’t exactly scream “mainstream”.

The truth is that from Wonder’s very first track (a wispy, a capella, forty-second cover of “Oh What A Beautiful Morning” as our heroine walks – one imagines, barefoot – through snapping twigs and fairground noises), you get the impression that this isn’t going to be just another singer-songwriter album. By the time the set kicks off proper with lead single “Neopolitan Dreams” swings in next; jaunty piano and glock riff and whispery, playful vocals; you’d be forgiven for suspecting that this is something very special indeed.

Wonder is by turns sweet, sad and wistful, mixing straightforward pop-with-a-twist (“Oh! Hark!”) with the sort of – dare I say it – almost alternative country stylings that were always going to get my notice. “So Jealous” brings to mind the Tegan and Sara album of the same name – it’s twangy and boppy with just enough harmony, and you can hear the fiddles and delicate finger-work on “Stevie” (a “cold-blooded chameleon”, perhaps a certain Ms Nicks?). “Sidekick” is a little fuller, more rocked-out Thea Gilmore style but with a sound that’s all her own.

There’s a playful side to Mitchell, as she whistles and sings of her heroines and her crushes; and the bouncy, summery “Clean White Love” perfectly showcases the latter in what is, for me, probably the album’s stand-out track. “Love Letter”, by contrast, balances the highs with the wistful reality of being “always on the road”.

There’s not much that misses the mark here, perhaps the odd moment where the singer tries some sort of Regina Spektor shtick with a voice that is more air and candyfloss and can’t quite pull it off, but the whole package is just so charming it’s easy to forgive. Definitely one of my current favourite discoveries.

Wonder is out now, ~~but if you need a little more convincing I have two album samplers to give away courtesy of Brilliantly Different.~~ Just leave a comment below or, for extra entries, trackback from your own blog or RT a link to this post @lastyearsgirl_. I’ll select two winners on Friday via RANDOM.ORG.

Congrats to Tyler and @mybitofsky – more contests soon! And check back over the weekend, when July’s mix will be posted.

Lisa Mitchell – Neopolitan Dreams

BUY: Wonder at Amazon.co.uk
LISTEN: to Lisa Mitchell at Myspace