Treehouse

Turbulent times for Shakey are revisited across 22 discs and 198 tracks

After a week away, I've been catching up these past few days, and also trying to remember what I talked about before I went on holiday. Best place to start, maybe, is the Natalie Prass record that Matthew E White has been sitting on for well over a year (he played me some of it at Spacebomb in March 2013). Fantastic song, which I described on Twitter as a kind of nuts Anita Baker/Willie Mitchell/Feist/Charles Stepney thing with a beat that would've been samplefood for Dre 15 yrs ago. Sticking with that for now. Also the red kite feather we found on holiday in Avebury feels serendipitous.

One of last year's unlikelier highlights was the hyperactive Swedish multi-piece I'm From Barcelona. A less creepy version of The Polyphonic Spree, their exuberance and catchy songs resulted in a forest of copy cat t-shirts roaming the grounds for the rest of the weekend. Things seem to have got more serious this time round: gone are the school uniforms and Smurf outfits, to be replaced with black outfits and white braces. But this is one band for whom channelling The Strokes is never going to be a viable option.

Second full-lengther from Liverpool-via-Bradford quintet, its title inspired by a Bulgarian folk ditty