Live gigs coming up! Cancel The Astronauts review! And more free downloads!

Hi there again. Tons of free downloadable music for you this week but TONS of info as well, so please read to the bottom. Thank you! :-)

The Legendary Graeme Mearns

This week's free and exclusive download is by The Legendary Graeme Mearns Band, captured digitally for posterity as they performed in front of an audience of millions at the scenic Ross Bandstand in Edinburgh's Princes Street Gardens this August.

Click here to listen and download this live bootleg recording, and remember, it is very much a bootleg, but don't despair, those of you who prefer more polished recordings. The band's album "Into The Hollows" is available as well on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, and eMusic.

Let me just mention again Peter Michael Rowan's three excellent compilation albums, of songs on which he appears! You can buy the three collections singly for £4 each, or for £1 a song, and every purchase will go towards the helping-Peter-to-move fund, so do your ears a favour and get your wallet out for some good music.

I also wanted to say thanks to the Labelled Independent podcast for including one of my songs in their latest episode. Check it out, there are eleven bands on that show as well, all of them very good. Hope you enjoy!

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I've got a couple of LIVE GIGS to tell you about this time actually, please stick these in your diary and come along for some awesome music

First i want to tell you about a gig that's happening on Tuesday 4 September at The Voodoo Rooms. It's Matt Norris and The Moon, Collar Up, Al Shields, and Three Little Birds, it's £10 admission, and it's part of STV's appeal to raise money for children living in poverty.  And that's at 7pm on Tuesday 4 September in The Voodoo Rooms ballroom.

Slightly unfortunately on the same night (Tuesday 4 September) at 7pm, a new Edinburgh open mic is being trialed upstairs at the recently refurbished Artisan Bar at 35-36 London Rd., EH7 5BQ, in Abbeyhill, corner of Montrose Terrace between Easter Rd and Meadowbank Stadium. PA and three mics supplied. Bring your own instruments. If successful, it could become a regular gig and a valuable addition to the Edinburgh open mic scene. Please turn up and help to get it off to a good start!


Next, let me mention The Return of Edinburgh Unlimited at The Meadow Bar on Thursday 13th of September. The acts will be: Echo Boomer (listen here), Kite And The Crane (listen here), The Sunday Republic (listen here), and Darren Hendrie (listen here). All this for only £3 ladies and gentlemen! tell everyone you know please, and here's the FB invite to forward round to everybody as well, please, if you could. Please note our new venue! It's in the upstairs room at The Meadow Bar on Buccleuch Street in Edinburgh, and that's on Thursday the 13th of September at 8pm.

I might also mention that Out Of The Bedroom (Edinburgh's longest running open mic night and songwriter community at large) is going through a lot of changes at the moment, in terms of a change of personnel running the nights, and a possible change of time and day as well. I would recommend those of you who are interested in the future of OOTB to get back in touch with them and keep your finger on the pulse for future developments. For the immediate future though, OOTB is still on Saturday nights at The Maltings/Montague Bar at 8pm (7:15pm for performers to sign up). 

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Cancel The Astronauts - Animal Love Match (2012)

Cancel The Astronauts are an Edinburgh (and Markinch!) band with a few very notable songs behind them, and they're releasing their new album "Animal Love Match" on 17 September. I had a listen to it and here's what i thought:

Cancel The Astronauts, finishing first.

This is quite a diverse album, and yet there are a lot of stylistic elements that hold it all together. I imagine this band would be great live because they've got a certain youthful energy, and their songs all sound different to each other! It would be easy for me to namedrop all the bands i think they might sound a bit like but, no, you may as well just judge these guys' music on it's own merit. They're doing their own thing, and that thing is a very human sounding kind of music (pop music? rock music? who knows?).  I mean i could say "Explosions In The Sky invite James and Arcade Fire round for tea" but what that would tell you very little about the actual music.
The album includes the singles Seven Vices and Intervention, and those songs both work well on the album, though i did feel like the other songs maybe stretched a bit further creatively and experimentally, and were more like a cohesive whole. It's not unusual for single tracks to stand out on an album but i think in this case the album stands out from the single tracks in some ways. As i said the album has quite a lot going for it, it has an eclectic selection of songs on it, it has that energetic undercurrent, it has good songwriting and song arrangements, every element's been thought about on this album, as with every good album. It's a great journey. It's nice that this is an album, rather than just a collection of songs.

I actually thought this album got more fun to listen to as i got further through it, and i suspect it'll get more enjoyable with repeated listens too.  All in all, this album was a pleasure to listen to, and i'll certainly be listening to it again. I heartily recommend you buy this album, and keep your eyes peeled in case Cancel The Astronauts are playing a gig near you soon.

Preorder "Animal Love Match" and you can also get some mysterious "goodies" from the band, album out 17 September 2012, and the album launch is at Sneaky Pete's in Edinburgh on 15 September. 

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So yeah, there's more music, and TONS of gigs big and small just go out and find them! More music stuff from me next week, see you out there in Musicland!

Calum Carlyle
Edinburgh Unlimited