The Underground of Happiness

Friday Trek to campsite. Find bearings. Admire grounds. Time for Lankum in the tent. Crowd love it. Sound is great but I am largely unmoved. See Chapter 9. That night the rain. Mud skiing. The Kraken Bar in the woods. Because it had a roof. And rum. Saturday The sun comes back out. Still ample mud for thigh workouts. Glasshouse play Joni Mitchell on the bandstand. Hearing Canada in the sunshine here is one of those perfect festival/life moments. One of the singers is Rachael Lavelle . More on her later in this series. Ringo Bingo in the kids area. A welcome diversion. Also clean toilets. Lisa O’Neill on the main stage. I’ve been agnostic but she is great here. Including a rousing cover of Black boys on mopeds by Sinéad O’Connor. Black Country New Road in the tent. Very interesting chamber/prog pop vibe. Your man right of stage immediately endears himself to me by announcing he’s had Beamish for the first time the day before – at a Guinness-sponsored fe...

New tunes for a new decade. Enjoy. Playlist The Fantasy Orchestra - Flow (Disco-Ordination) Arboretum – A prism in reverse (Thrill Jockey) Cabane feat. Kate Stables & Bost Gehio – Now, winter comes (White Label) Coco – Empty Beach (FCA Records) Craven Faults – Vacca wall (The Leaf Label) Caribou – Never come back (Merge/City Slang) Olafur Arnalds feat. Voces8 – Nyepi (choir version) Daniel Knox – Room key (HP Johnson Presents) Keeley Forsyth – Look to yourself (The Leaf label) Aoife Nessa Frances – Libra (Basin Rock) Dead Famous People – Groovy girl (Fire Records) Jeffrey Lewis & The Voltage – Exactly what nobody wanted (Moshi Moshi Records) Katie Von Schleicher – Caged sleep (Full Time Hobby) Theatre Royal – A marvellous death (Vacilando ’68) Shadow Show – Contessa (Stolen Body Records) Lewsberg – From never to once M Ward – Migration of souls (Anti Records) Mick Harvey – The Somme (from the soundtrack of the film Waves of Anzac) (Mute) Modern Stu...

Tunes. To take stock. Hibernate. Consolidate. Elucidate. Funny old world. Stick with the noise. Enjoy. Playlist Slow Moving Clouds – Karelian (from the soundtrack of Loch na hEala/Swan Lake ) Owen Tromans – A dialogue (Sacred Geometry) Gene Clark – No other (Remaster, 4AD) Aoife Nessa Frances – Here in the dark (Basin Rock) Skinshape – I didn’t know (Big Crown Records) Charles Rumback & Ryley Walker – Half joking (Thrill Jockey) OTTO – Roter teppich (Bureau B) Hochzeitskapelle – Sonido Amazonico (Gutfeeling Records/Broken Silence) Lal & Mike Waterson – Red wine promises (Domino) Bananagun – Out of reach (Full Time Hobby) Holy Hive feat Shannon Wise – Golden crown (Big Crown Records) Keeley Forsyth – Debris (The Leaf Label) Craven Faults – Deipkier (The Leaf Label) Caribou – Home (Merge) Percolator – Freshin (Penske Recordings) Rothko – The day before the day after your death (Trace Recordings) Rachael Dadd – Arrows (Memphis Industrie...

And so Part 2 of this end of year series. There seems to have been less up tempo electronic music on my radar this year, hence a few crop up in this mostly-guitar set. (There are some ambient and other electronic cuts to come in the final part of the round-up.) Let's not get hung up on that. Enjoy. 1. Future Islands – Seasons (Waiting on you) (4AD) With all due respect to Hozier (who owed a lot in turn to the work of Feel Good Lost, plus maybe ‘Take me to church’ was more of a 2013 thing in any case?) and Kim Kardashian’s buttocks, here was the true thing that broke the internet this year. It showed the power to light up the world of sheer chutzpah – a short, barrel-chested man who can sing his heart out all night and dances like he doesn’t give a fuck who’s watching. On paper those are not the most promising ingredients, perhaps, but Sam Herring turns them into gold, when combined with the thrumming, soaring melodies of Will Cashion and Gerrit Welmers. Funnily enough,...

This week's show was dominated by a look back at some of my favourite music of 2014. (There'll be more on this in the next few weeks by the way, stay tuned for details.) So plenty of album of the year candidates in Caribou and Wildbirds & Peacedrums , Future Islands and East River Pipe (albeit reissued), Adrian Crowley and Aldous Harding . There was also some new music from Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith and Slow Dancing Society , more from both of those in the new year. And a Hawaiian Christmas treatment from Arthur Lyman (thanks Trunk Records ), just to keep things seasonal. As I said, more on the blog over the next few weeks on my fave music of 2014. And the next show is on Jan 6th. Happy holidays. Dec 16 2014 w/ Caribou,W&P,Adrian Crowley,Jessica Pratt,Aldous Harding,Cool Ghouls,East River Pipe++ by The Underground Of Happiness on Mixcloud The Underground of Happiness uplifting pop music of every creed www.theundergroundofhappiness.blogspot.com...

I've been a bit remiss with posting on new music lately so time for some favourite tunes from the past month or two. There's plenty to catch up on. Dan Snaith returns as Caribou , after his great sideline under the name Daphni a couple of years ago. This is the lead track from new album Our love which comes out on October 7th, and in fact it takes up where Daphni left off. That is to say - warm, bouncy house backbeats, a soothing bath of synths and soulful vocal samples. It's beautiful and builds a whole world, an entire narrative, emotional arc, into 4 minutes. It comes out with an atmosphere of something like downbeat euphoria, which is an intriguing state of affairs to find yourself in on the dancefloor. Here's the full album blurb. You reach a point in life where the question of how to stay at the top of your game looms, with the only real solution being: you change the game. Our Love, the new album from Caribou, is the sound of Dan Snaith doing...