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The Ladies are now “The Sound of The Ladies”. Excited? You oughtta be.

Rosebud EP out next month…

Thanks to the lovely Miss Josie Long (never met her before in my life, gov…) The Ladies’ Valentines gig got an honourable mention in the Sunday Times (first page of the Culture section, no less). The gig is at the Slaughtered Lamb in Clerkenwell, as part of Will Rees’ infamous Electroacoustic Club. Get today’s Sunday Times to see it in all its one inch glory.

In more news, the as-yet untitled follow up EP to “Tissue of Lies” is pretty much complete, sat on my hard drive waiting to be mixed into shape. It will feature acoustic versions of “One of those girls”, “D-E-A-D”, “How you could have been in love with me” and “Swimming Skills”. Hopefully it’ll be ready in time for the next gig.

I’ve put the EP on the back-burner in order to write some new songs (sorry Ladiesfans), which is long overdue. Abandoning one’s muse for any period of time is not to be advised or taken lightly. Currently in the pipeline are “Deep dish”, feels like it will turn out to be pretty minimal; I’m going for a cross between “I want a little sugar in my bowl” and “Your flesh is so nice”, but it will most likely not sound like either. “Something beautiful” is probably going to sound like something Billy Corgan never got round to writing.

The gigs are pretty interesting, I’ve been alternating between playing with the superbass, the telecaster and my new spanish (classical) guitar, all of which lends a slightly different vibe to the evening. The classical has a real warmth that you don’t get with a steel-strung guitar; the superbass has a mellow fullness because of its awesome low end; and the telecaster, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, “sounds great played in a room with a corrugated iron roof and a concrete floor”. It is one zingy motherfucker.

Hello everyone

No Ladies news for ages, hence no bloggage. There have been a few gigs, some of which have been wonderful and others which haven’t. The rich tapestry of life etc etc. We’re currently working on a new recording which will probably be an EP. At the moment there’s a new guitar instrumental called “Not New York” which was recorded in a relentless rainstorm, and the guitar and uke parts for “The Clouds at the Top of the Sky” are roughly complete. The other songs slated for inclusion are “One of those Girls”, “How you could have been in love with me” and a new acoustic recording of “D-E-A-D”. So I just to need to record the mofo.

No other news, more as it breaks…

The fabbo God is in the TV zine have just reviewed Tissue of Lies, dudes what they are… it says the usual stuff “promising debut of musical genius in waiting” type thing. Ok, don’t believe me; it says

“…the affecting, bittersweet ‘I Promised Myself I Wouldn’t Cry’ … perfectly evokes waking up to a beautiful sunny morning and half an empty bed…”

and that The Ladies’ music

“…shows a refreshing understanding of music outside the rock spectrum whilst retaining direct songwriting and a good sense of melody…points for getting the word ‘inauspicious’ in there, but it matters little when the tender, thoughtful ‘Spider’ and aforementioned ‘I Promised.’ have been knocking around your head for several days, the most obvious and natural accolade for a record that there is…”

Read it in its entirity here:

http://giittv.hypnotisingsilence.net/reviews/theladiestol.htm

and check out the rest of the zine while you’re there.

The Ladies have a couple of new reviews, the first one is here:

http://www.vanityproject.co.uk/

and the best bits go

Light bossa nova “Worse” opens the 7 track EP with a gentle tap on the shoulder, “Nightmare #6″ continuing the hushed pace, the ghostly backing vocal leading it stealthily into a more rabid strum. This is a soft, considerate record of mild melancholic music that brings to mind Black and the Blue Nile…

which is nice. I always enjoy being compared to bands I’ve never heard (of).

The Ladies combine John Zorn’s careening sense of space with Whitehouse’s attention to detail and their hushed vocal is reminiscent of Faust and Dogbox

Hey, I’m not complaining! I expect reviewers only compare to what they know. They do better than I do - all the reviews I wrote mentioned the Pixies or Tori Amos…

And Backlash Magazine is out, which has a lovely review. You’ll have to buy it to find out what it says. Visit them here

http://www.backlashmagazine.com

because it is really rather good…

Newsflash!

**drops donut**

Who am I kidding, no one reads this for news. Do you even know how to set up a feed? I thought not. Sometimes I wonder why I bother. Shall I just send you an email? Ok, I’ll do that.

The news is, I’m playing a short set at the Electroacoustic Club’s Easter Egg! Don’t come for me, I’m only doing a few songs, come for all of the other acts. It should be a good one.

My first gig at the Red Room, really nice space. Unfortunately I ducked out for Chinese after my set because I was absolutely ravenous. My hunger made me go all blurry.

Man, that salt and pepper squid/salt and pepper spare ribs/spring roll/char sui noodles in soup went down well. I wanted duck but they didn’t have any! We laughed. tI’ve got a quiet couple of weeks before my next gig on the 25th so I might put my feet up and eat some donuts*. I’ve realised it coincides with Songs in The Dark, which I’ve been meaning to get to for about four months but some minor catastrophe (forgetting, depression, dinner date) always intervenes. I feel like a massive loser. Everyone should probably go to SITD rather than my gig. Unless you live in Greenwich.

*God, that’s a romanticized version of my life! 30% of my time will be spent working in an office, 10% travelling, 20% eating, 20% passing through turbulent vistas of acute anxiety in the search for a decent song, 10% swearing, 9% misc (washing, thinking about climate change, etc) and about 1% writing, recording, practicing and being vaguely happy with any material. Oh, that’s not including sleep time

I found this one by accident! They also seem to quite like me/The Ladies.

“…a collection of subtle semi-acoustic tracks set against his sombre, gently-swooping voice. ‘Worse’ almost recalls the uncluttered sonic distance to some of Jose Gonzales’ self-penned work, with a bossanova twitchiness and a lilt to his voice a tiny bit reminiscent of Rufus Wainwright in places. Standout ‘Nightmare #6’ works best though, casually shifting up an understated gear into something fierier and more poised halfway through, before falling into unsettled drones of feedback…”

You can read the full review here.

Oh, here is the gist of the Russell review.

“…the music itself falls into two categories, jazzy sounding loveliness and wailing oddities. In the former section we have ‘Worse’, all Thom Yorke mumbled vocals and tropicalia rhythms and the Lambchop like ‘Spider’. ‘Nightmare no 6′ and ‘I Promised Myself I Wouldn’t Cry’ fall into the latter…”

Weirdly, he hates the tracks the other dude liked the bestest. Critics, eh? And mumbled? H’ shol hi ma spik…

The first review of the Tissue of Lies EP is up here. He doesn’t unequivocally love all the songs, but at the same time I get compared to Thom Yorke and Lambchop in the same paragraph, so you won’t hear me complaining…