The Victoria, Birmingham/ 15th October 2009, 8PM

After our brief hiatus it’s great to be putting an event on. For this one, we’ve teamed up with Birmingham’s own Commercially Inviable Records to celebrate the recent launch of Simon Fox’s new album, Everything Is For The Best. Simon will be supported by label mates and good friends James Summerfield, Friends of the Stars and Richard Burke.

Expect a night of luminous, contemporary takes on folk tradition, with collaborations between the musicians and Colour DJs playing some of the best leftfield folk, indie and Americana. We’ll be projecting vintage slides and there will be homemade cakes.

About the Artists

World of Fox

Simon Fox is one of the region’s most talented folk musicians and he’s just released a new album via Birmingham label Commercially Inviable. Featuring gentle fingerpicking laid over swirling, mesmeric backgrounds, it’s a captivating record that reveals itself slowly, unfurling a great range and depth beneath it’s beguiling exterior.

For the best part of a decade Simon was the leader of post-rock outfit Grover, which is evident on Everything Is For The Best in the immersive atmospherics that add a twist to the pastoral folk guitar that eddies above.  This makes the extended instrumental passages coursing through the album a beautiful place to lose yourself a little. Lyrically, Fox playfully adapts tried-and-true verse and rhyme structures to tell modern tales of lost loves, existential malaise and drunken belligerence.

Stream: Everything is for the Best in full.

MP3s: Leaves Me Blind / Yarlington Mill / Idiocracy / Witness (.zip)

James Summerfield

Last year’s Count To 10 and Start Again (one of our favourite albums of 2008) saw James Summerfield working through the fallout and self doubt caused by divorce, but with a lightness of touch, dark and strange humour and his finely-honed, fantastic ear for melody to tell sweet tales of the biggest blows. Live, James is a revelation: delicate, hushed Americana and folk songs full of beautiful sadness. James has recently supported fellow Midlander Scott Matthews on his UK tour and has previously opened for Josh Ritter and Richmond Fontaine.

MP3s: Films / Another Day With You Is Like Torture / Once / Films (.zip)

Friends of the Stars

Entering their seventh year together and soon to release their second album, Friends of the Stars aren’t a band who like to rush things – nothing about their songs feels forced or unnatural, which is why their country and folk debut Lighting and Electrical took two years to come out, as the band selected songs from hundreds they’d stepped into over the years. On stage, Anna Russell’s vocals take the centre, often with the rougher-edged harmonies of Craig and Cam in accompaniment.

MySpace

Richard Burke

In a similar way to Simon, Richard initially liked things a little louder – his previous band The Starries played melodic indie rock and toured with Idlewild, before splitting in 2003. Since then, Richard has focused on weaving the melodic surge of indie music with more traditional folk music, influenced by Elliott Smith, Jason Molina and Will Oldham.

MySpace