Posted via email from AHFoW (slight return)

Ceremony:

Snowstorm:

Blue Thunder:

Also spotted this rather lovely picture on flickr by Nathan Wind

UPDATE:
Another video (thanks Nathan!)

Dean Wareham plays Galaxie 500 – Temperature’s Rising (Live at Tanned Tin 2010) from Nathan Wind on Vimeo.

I love the rugs and am, as always, impressed at Dean’s choice of footwear…

I also came across this video of them playing Tiger Lily…

Damon & Naomi

I arrived at Cafe OTO shortly before opening act Amor de Dias took to the stage. The venue was already fairly crowded so I shuffled in and found a spot near the front but tucked in behind a pillar. Most of the folk around me were sitting so I felt a bit conspicuous but held my ground, reasoning to myself that if I wasn’t obstructing their view the pillar would be.

Amor de Dias is the new project of Alasdair MacLean of The Clientle and Lupe Núñez-Fernández of Pipas. They played a short but very beautiful set of tropic-tinged folk guitar music accompanied on a couple of tracks by “Anne” on a huge recorder. Alasdair introduced the first track as “someone born in Aberdeen trying to play guitar like Caetano Veloso.” I think a couple of the numbers were tracks from Bonfires on the Heath, the new album by The Clientele coming out next month.

Amor de Dias

In the break before The Left Outsides, Damon came over for a chat and gave me a copy of the new Sub Pop Years compilation. I’m such a fan that I still get a glow just for being recognised (Alasdair patted my shoulder and said “nice to see you”… I love how the Internet has put me, albeit only in my head, in the same ball-park as cool and talented people.)

This must have been the fourth or fifth time I’ve seen The Left Outsides, they seem to be pulled in to support most bands I go and see these days. They make a lovely sound although they struggled a little tonight and the set seemed short and not as sweet as usual. Still lovely… just not as lovely as I know they can be. Maybe my appreciation was coloured by the time (more of that later).

Before Damon & Naomi took to the stage I had a chat with Joakim who was over for the show with his girlfriend, who was too shy to say hello (which as someone who has often been too shy to say hello I completely understand – so this is by way of a “hello” to her now). They knew of me through A Head Full of Wishes and under the name “And Suddenly” had contributed a lovely lo-fi cover of Luna’s “Tiger Lily” to the Decomposing Trees tribute CDR I’d released many years previously (and still available to download for free here). I can’t help get a warm buzz when I think of all the nice people I’ve met through AHFoW.

By now I was checking my watch obsessively. Leaving my bike at Acton Central meant that the only way I would get home at anything approaching a reasonable hour would involve me catching the last train west from Dalston Kingsland… that train left at 23:03 and Damon & Naomi never started until almost 22:10 so I was already resigned to having to skip out before the show ended.

Obviously a real fan (or at least a younger one) would have shrugged off the thought of a late night and worried about getting home after the show was over. But I’ve reached a stage in my life where getting home easily, quickly and as early as possible seemed more important.

Damon and Naomi opened with Song to the Siren and played through a set mixing tracks from their Sub Pop years with more recent tracks. Highs, and it was all up there, were New York City, which never fails to move me and Lilac Land. But by now time was getting on. In my head I was trying to work out how long it had taken me to walk from the station… how long… then Damon & Naomi, as if hinting that I was cutting it fine, played “How Long.” They finished the song and I bolted for the door, passing Alasdair who I assume was heading for the stage and a guest appearance. I paused at the door for a second and then left… ran to the station and had a five minute wait (at least one more song) before the train showed up.

The journey home was uneventful except that I learnt from The Sub Pop Years liner notes that Song to the Siren was a fake live album! A lovely evening but annoyed that I couldn’t see the whole show.

If anyone cares to fill me in on what I missed… please do… just don’t make it sound too great because I’m miserable enough already!

More pictures on Flickr.

Which means that we can sit through a slideshow of most of the 13 (I make it 11) as well as pictures of one of the 13, Mary Woronow, being interviewed on stage before the show.

slowmotiontrax has put up loads of pictures from Dean & Britta’s performance at Johnny Brenda’s in Philadelphia including some of the couple performing with support act (and Double Feature recording artist) Cheval Sombre.

Cheval Sombre at Death by Audio

View the whole set on Flickr

A cool set of pictures from Dean & Britrta’s show with Mercury Rev at The Highline Ballroom in NYC at the tail end of last year have just turned up on Flickr. As well as some nice on stage shots there are a few after show pics. It’s also worth going through the set to see the beautifullty mad photos of Jonathan Donahue of Mercvury Rev (both on stage and off (with Tony Vosconti)).

Very cool composite picture of Dean Wareham and Paul America from Dean & Britta’s recent show in Chicago. Photo taken from Kirstiecat’s photostream where you can find another of my favourite Dean & Britta pictures.

This rather cool picture of Galaxie 500 playing an instore in London in Novermber of 1990 while promoting their last album.

Hazel and I headed out to the lovely Luminaire last night to catch Damon & Naomi play a very sweet and nicely well attended show in London. We missed the first support but caught the whole of The Left Outsides playing another enjoyable set. We oddly managed to find a very good spot right at the front of the stage after The Left Outsides had finished.

It seems that Naomi hadn’t brought over her bass so played the whole set on her Nord Electro 2. They played a great set mixed from old (In The Sun, Memories, New York City), new (Lilac Land, Stars Never Fade, Cruel Queen) and one unreleased track – a cover of the Scott Walker track “The World’s Strongest Man” which they’ve recorded for a new Scott Walker tribute record (about which I haven’t managed to track down any information as yet).

Damon was, as usual, on good form with a hilariously bizarre story about his afternoon visit to The Freud Museum. It was nice to be able to enjoy Damon’s rambles without having to worry about them eating into a short (supporting) set.

Alasdair MacLean of The Clientele, added his very distinctive guitar to set closer Cruel Queen (and made me regret the laziness that kept me at home when they played the same venue last week). For the encore Damon & Naomi pulled out a track from More Sad Hits, which only seemed fair given the amount of very good press the re-release has had over here (that I’m sure contributed to the size of the crowd), they chose “Memories” and followed it with “In The Sun” (with Naomi singing, so more Playback Singers than Pierre Etoile version).

And then it was over. I chatted very briefly to Naomi after the show, she introduced me to Phil McMullen (former editor of Ptolemaic Terrascope), a more social person than I would have made more of a treat like that but I just shook hands and smiled inanely, and then we bolted for the train home.

Here’s the setlist, not in order (except first three and last three), I think this is all there was…

• Song to the Siren (Tim Buckley)
• Eye of the Storm
• Ueno Station
• Lilac Land
• Turn of the Century
• Stars Never Fade
• The World’s Strongest Man (Scott Walker)
• New York City
• Cruel Queen (with Alasdair MacLean of The Clientele)
• Memories (Hugh Hopper)
• In the Sun