So we have been snowed in today!! but instead of going out and braving the cold we have resisted the temptation of snowball fights and snowman construction to continue our commitment to your eyes and ears by making a video!!
A video for a live acoustic version of Moonraker!! shot in Jim’s living room/back garden featuring next door’s cat and a model of the ASIMO robot (obviously!!). Shot, edited and all other filmy type stuff by our good friend Matt Grover.
enjoy!!
If you would like to download this version of the song for free!! just click on “download” in the player below.
Well it doesn’t get much better than this…The liners have been busy watching some of their favourite bands/artists this weekend.
Gig number 1: Nick Cave!
Harv managed to win Resident’s re-create aNick Cave album competition and got tickets to the live rehearsal at King Alfred’s!
He made the Murder Ballads cover out of vegetables, icing sugar, flour, matchmakers (mint) and enough food dye to turn a rhino blue. It ended up looking like a child’s art project but the good people at Resident clearly had a sense of humour. If you want to see how you turn broccoli into Nick Cave tickets then here’s two pictures for you…the work in progress/1st attempt and the finished masterpiece…and the actual cover to compare.
The gig was AMAZING, tiny venue, full Bad Seeds set up with 4 piece string section and children’s choir, quality leisure centre décor and Nick Cave on top form.
Played all of the new album, ‘Jubilee Street’ and ‘Higgs Boson Blues’ the immediate stand outs, and then played an hours worth of songs from his frankly disgustingly good back catalogue….and…Nick Cave confirmed that it was indeed him who ploughed into the speed camera in his car awhile back…local legend status confirmed!
Gig number 2…Jason Lytle!
All of team liners were at this one and Simon even managed to convince someone that he should DJ between the acts…his collection of reggaetronica has never sounded better.
So after a great set from Aaron from EarlimartJason came on armed with sampler, keyboard and acoustic and a buddy on extra guitar, synth and harmony duties. He played quite a few off the new album and then a load of tracks from his, here we go again, frankly disgustingly good back catalogue.
‘Matterhorn’ and ‘Somewhere there’s a Someone’ were particularly good from the selection of new songs being aired. Harv has just realised it would have cunning to have linked the two gigs by getting Jason’s opinion of the Emmylou Harris version of “So You’ll Aim Towards The Sky” on the Nick Cave complied/created Lawless soundtrack…but he didn’t.
All in all a pretty faultless weekend of gig going really and we managed to squeeze in a rehearsal too…onwards we roll.
Now it may have appeared that after a flurry of activity there has been a bit of radio silence since our album launch and tour but rest assured we have been busy…thinking mainly…what can we do to top 2012? It was a great year for WSL but onwards and upwards.
Firstly if you fancy a quick read check out this blog -
We were very pleased to read the kind words relating to our album, which comes in at a very respectable 11 in the best albums of the year.
So onto the plan for 2013…over the coming months you can expect an EP led by Practicing Goodbyes, one of our fave tracks on the new album, and also featuring a handful of brand new songs that we are in the process of recording as I type…well not literally obviously. We are also going to shoot a video for practicing Goodbyes to watch this space for updates on that.
We are also planning on putting quite a few more videos up onto our YouTube channel in the near future. Expect videos for some of the album tracks, a mini Granddaddy tour doc and maybe a few more vids of some covers that take our fancy.
Jim and Harv are also hatching a plan to get new songs out to the good people on our mailing list every couple of months over the coming year…Jim wants to try out some new recording gear he is playing around with so we thought we would try to make it worthwhile and get some more songs out there which we hope you will enjoy.
And lastly…we have some gigs lined up which we are just crossing the t’s and dotting the lower case j”s on so watch this space for updates on that front.
Just checking in whilst we have got 5 minutes of down time to say a gigantic, massively huge THANK YOU!! for everyones support and nice comments at our launch gig on Friday!!! We went onstage pooing our pants having to follow the almighty Budo Grape!! (YOU HAVE TO CHECK THEM OUT!!) but the reception we got from you guys was AMAZING!!! so thank you!!! and we hope your enjoying the new album?
We will be putting up some snaps and video from the show tomorrow. If any of you guys have any photos of the gig please post them on our facebook page if you can ? (it’ll be interesting to see how drunk we were haha!!)
Jim also headed off to see the nice chaps at radio Uckfield on Sunday evening for a chat and to play an acoustic set. He played a bunch songs, old and new, including an extremely stripped back version of “Practicing Goodbyes” from the new album. ”Tyre Pressure Was The Least Of His Worries” and of course was questioned AGAIN!! of the songs origins!!! which is something he is going to have to live with forever by the looks of things HAHA!!!
Ok our five minutes is up now and we must crack on with the tour! we are off to London tonight to play at The Good Ship in Kilburn, looks like its going to be a top night with some cracking bands so if your in that neck of the woods come on down and say hi!
So Tent Vs. Blizzard has left the safety of studio and is now available to you good people of the world! and the album and the tourare nearly upon us.
OUT NOW!
The Years That Slid has been two and a half years in the making and is the full stop at the end of couple of pretty heavy chapters in camp liners that we don’t want to repeat any time soon.
Many seismic changes dominoed through our personal lives as we wrote, rehearsed and recorded these songs and now that the album is about to make it’s way out into the world the feeling is as much one of relief as it is pride really.
We hope you’ll agree that in spite of it’s turbulent origins the album has a healthy dose of hard won optimism for the future mixed in with it’s pretty frank look back the other way.
Pre-Order NOW!
In the words of, errrr Stallone maybe, ‘whatever doesn’t kill you…’ and all that jazz.
Anyways enough of the heavy stuff, there are also songs about vacuums in televisions, gramophones left on mountains and the exit strategies you concoct when you realise you are at a very very crap party populated by people happy to talk at disconcerting length about things such as unfilled potholes and the optional extras they went for in their new en-suite.
Aside from gearing up for the album we have been squirreled away getting ready for our trip up and down the country too. We have loads of the new songs up to gig speed now and we will wheel out a couple of older numbers for good measure too. If you are based somewhere near where we are headingthen hopefully you might pop down and see us.
Album Launch Show
To kick off proceedings we have arranged an album launch show at the Prince Albert in Brighton on Friday 26th October. This will be the first place where you will be able to get your mits on the album! so if you live near by then come on down and help us bring it into the world with a bang!! more info on the show here..
Here it is, our first single, Tent VS Blizzard!! Out this Sunday, 14th October. Available on iTunes, Amazon and loads of other online music shops that we cant remember the names of???
Just like to say a quick thank you to Gareth Wellock for yet again coming up trumps on the artwork and to Matt Grover for yet again coming up trumps on making the video, both legends!!!
With the release date for our new album nearly upon us we thought that some of you might like to have it on your doormat the day it comes out… or maybe even a few days before if the wind is in the Postman’s sails.
So we have set up a pre-order of the album which you can get your mits on here!
More details about the album will feature in later posts but suffice to say it has been an up and down time for White Star Liners over the last few years and the highs and lows of that period are all over the twelve tracks on the album.
Track listing -
1. On and On
2. About To Stall
3. Tent VS. Blizzard
4. The Years That Slid
5. Moonraker
6. The Dark Comes Undone
7. Can We Start Again?
8. Happy G
9. Barefoot At The Ice Rink
10. Stars Spell Your Name
11. Practicing Goodbyes
12. 2am Improvements
We will be playing a run of dates in the week running up to the release, starting at The Prince Albert in Brighton on Friday 26th October then onto London, Liverpool, Hull and Yorkshire, more info on those dates will be coming very soon. So to those of you that can make it we will see you there! it’s going to be mega!
Tent VS Blizzard is the first single from the album and will be released this coming Sunday, 14th October. so keep your eyes peeled for that.
Our series of super informative Infofilms and the tracks Tent vs. Blizzard and Moonraker have been up on our website for a few weeks now and hopefully these give a pretty good indication of the sort of thing to expect from the album. But just in case you missed them or your new to the White Star Liner world then check them out…
Moonraker
The Years That Slid Interview Infofilm
Tent Vs. Blizzard
With the help of our resident studio Wizard Ali Gavan we think we have pushed the WSL sound to the next level (think Mario 1 to Mario 3).
