Charlotte Church: What is she doing?

She needs to sell her soul to Xenomania ASAP.

I too am upset by how unfun it is, on first play it was all dayglo fizz like olde-Moloko or Ze or something, and then someone said "Anastacia!" and the spell was broken.

BUt it's all sobbing and self-help. Half the songs look as if the lyrics were written by Geri Halliwell.

The record's kind of growing on me beyond the undoubted genius of tracks 1-3. The ballads aren't that nauseous, and in some cases are rather touching (cf. "Confessional Song" with the rather sorry day-in-the-life attempt that the Appletons did a couple of years ago). "Let's Be Alone" is quite fantastique in a Xenomania-do-1983-Cabaret Voltaire kind of way, and even the obligatory echt-flamenco of "Casualty Of Love" works quite well.

And indeed, the spine of my copy also says "Crazy Chick" as opposed to "Tissues And Issues."

(best idea ever; Charlotte covering "Of Walking Abortion" for a B-side)

Of course she is! She's a GURL!

ugh

have u not heard 'oh'? have u not heard '1-2 step' and 'goodies'

i've seen charlotte on jonathan ross performing her first single

again: ugh

she shakes her hips (or tries to)

again: ugh

so i understand your (cheap) choice ;))

crazy chick however is all about the handclaps.

popjustice £20 prize winner?

Dear Charlotte

I have written a song for your next hit. It is called HIGH SCORE

I need a man like you
Who can do
The things that you
And only you can do
Ooh

High score! High score!
You take me to the next level!
High score! High score!
In your love I will revel!
High score! High score!
You beat my end of level boss!
High score! High score!
You wrap me up in candy floss!

I need a man so sweet
You got me beat
You didn't even have to cheat

[Everything stops here, and you just sort of whisper]

(You just read my manual)

[Synth drums]

Ooh ooh yeah

[More synth drums]

Ooh ooh yeah

[Children singing]

You are the best
You passed her test

[You again, Charlotte]

High score! High score!
You take me to the next level!
High score! High score!
In your love I will revel!
High score! High score!
You beat my end of level boss!
High score! High score!
You wrap me up in candy floss!

THE END (OF THE SONG)]

I hope you like it, but you'll need to get in touch with me about the tune and other questions.

The Feeling did that "Never be lonely" and looked like they were trying to pretend she wasn't there.

The Orson one went OK

I havent seen any of the others.

[Children singing]

[Children singing]

[Children singing]

[Children singing]

[Children singing]

[Children singing]

[Children singing]

[Children singing]

[Children singing]

[Children singing]

[Children singing]

[Children singing]

[Children singing]

Andrew WK?

Seriously, the authorities need to be alerted.

[Everything stops here, and you just sort of whisper]

You just read my manual

By the end of the series, I expect she'll be doing "High Score" with Paul Danan.

Very little talk about the purported new direction she's taking. Apparently she's been tweeting about Disco Inferno vinyl and stuff. Not sure what I make of this, it's halfway between her old pop stuff and Hail To The Thief I guess...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4IT3aJ90aA

someone wants to be kate bush

Oh, I reviewed one of her recent shows and had a chat with her afterwards in the smoking yard. It's a Florence-type thing, basically - which goes for the singing style in particular. Many of her vocal lines sat quite oddly against the arrangements, not quite gelling. Self-penned lyrics, co-written with her band, several songs about Leveson / press intrusion / Daily Mail / Paul Dacre / online trolls etc - but for all that, not very memorable. Surprisingly diffident performance style; she's clearly still finding her way, so building experience in small venues during the summer recess was a good way to go. Lots of slight;y self-conscious hair-touching. Diction not nearly as clear as you would expect, lines half-swallowed, quite a "singing to myself" vibe. On stage, she's also in charge of the knob twiddling, laptop priming and live looping, which was clearly a bit of a challenge - she started the introductory track crouching on the floor, which had me thinking we were in for full-on theatrical histrionics, but it was actually just so that she could see which pedals to press. All the tracks in the current set (except the intro track) are planned to appear on a series of EPs, with a video to accompany each track. No old material performed. Saw her at a 250-capacity venue which was maybe 2/3rds full, mainly curious regulars and a lot of industry (the guest list was massive, probably half the crowd at least). Strongly doubt that she will ever be able to transistion this stuff to larger venues, but not sure that she's that bothered either way. Tempting to say "vanity project", but there wasn't any vanity on display at all - she meant it, man - so the well-meaning dilettantism was quite attractive, even though the music was no great shakes.

she was upstairs in a pub near me with a sneering preview in the oxford music rag, they made it sound like it was Label Mandated Indie Rock Turn or something (and chose of all the possible preview photos the most cleavage-y thing)

songs about the pitfalls of being in the public eye are never as interesting to the listener as they are to the performer, i guess

i don't know, i kind of love the new why? record

that guy just *lives* on the red carpet

lol yeah

xpost - the new stuff is self-released, and this is the promo shot she's been using for the tour:

http://www.wotyougot.com/pictures//2012/05/charlotte-church-new-tour-poster-may-2012.jpg

that was not the promo shot that oxford's local rag which totally doesn't have a history of being snidely dismissive of female musicians chose to run

I remember Jonatnan King using a similar photo (don't look for it it's pretty gross)..

Yeah, funny how this couldn't possibly be Charlotte Church's idea it has to be a big bad record label executive etc.

Gotta love that Northcliffe regional newspaper website rude word auto-censor facility! Having already censored "skank" (legitimate musical term!) and "pussy" (legitimate Azealia Banks blouse-blow fashion term!) in previous reviews of mine (and having rendered "monobrow" as "mo***row" in a colleague's review of Miles Kane), it then saw fit to render "Paul Dacre" as a string of asterisks in my Charlotte Church review.

Would pay good money to get my hands on their Reserved Words list: skank, pussy, nob, Paul Dacre... they don't run a paper in Scunthorpe, I take it?

("blouse BOW fashion term", duh. As in: pussy-BOW. Rest easy, she wasn't doing 212 as mime.)

What she bought at Rough Trade (there for an in-store):

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/09/06/article-2198982-14DB85C8000005DC-138_634x456.jpg

xp I'd hit up Private Eye about that if I were you Mike

WHAT a good idea...

wkiw charlotte church

CHARLOTTE CHURCH ANNOUNCES FIRST U.S. RELEASE IN OVER A DECADE

U.S. TOUR SCHEDULED FOR SPRING 2013

On March 12, 2013, Welsh singer-songwriter Charlotte Church will unleash her first U.S. release in over a decade on her own label, Alligator Wine. A dark and searing evolution that confounds all expectations of the 27-year-old international star, ‘ONE & TWO’ marks a transformation of Church’s renowned classical training. Influenced by her love of artists like Radiohead, LCD Soundsystem, and Sufjan Stevens and marked with daring experimentation, this record reflects a growth Church recently described to Q Magazine: “I have a whole vocal range I have now liberated.”

‘ONE’ was previously released in the U.K. as an EP that drew overwhelming acclaim from the British music press. The first in a series of five EPs to be released throughout 2013, ‘ONE & TWO’ is Church doing “gothic rock” that “suits her remarkable (voice)” (The Independent). Written and produced by Church (with bandmates Jonathan Powell and Jamie Neasom), ‘ONE & TWO’ calls to mind Vespertine-era Bjork on tracks like standout “Glitterbombed” with its synths, tribal drums, and delicate vocals exploding into a feral, dark-disco chorus.

Church also drew inspiration from Nabokov’s Pale Fire and “the idea of living in a temporal plane where…you have to make peace with all the people you have ever known” for the ethereal lullaby “How Not to be Surprised When You’re A Ghost”—another album highlight. “Making peace with yourself and others is a huge theme,” Church said of the album.

By the age of 21, Charlotte Church had sold more than 10 million records worldwide, sang for Nelson Mandela, the Queen, the Pope, and two U.S. Presidents, as well as tens of thousands of people at sold out shows internationally.

LIVE US DATES
March 13-16 SXSW Austin, TX
March 20 Troubadour Los Angeles, CA
March 21 Rickshaw Stop San Francisco, CA
March 25 Joe’s Pub New York, NY

Think I just arranged to meet her for a pint at a Dismemberment Plan show in Bristol. Gotta love Twitter.

'glitterbombed' is a pretty mindblowing song

shudder to think fan too: http://thequietus.com/articles/13370-charlotte-church-favourite-albums

plus she picked Greg from Deerhoof as her ideal drummer in another paper recently. basically, she's will indie.

that chat show she had where she did pranks was fairly funny imo.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-24528022

yep. hoping she pursues her artistic development down the route she's taken, could be v interesting, even if her boyfriend said that nasty thing about Mogwai to me that one time haha (now THERE'S a namedrop)

i caught her new thing on the end of that fuck-awful tim lovejoy sunday cookery show the other week

they spent the whole hour being cute around her like she was still 17 and then she and her beardy band unleashed this bizarre and fairly hilarious wailing live prog drum n bass odyssey, proper anachronous saturnz return business

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fqz-3P5aVA

~ creativity ~

someone's been listening to fever ray (edit: and 65daysofstatic lol)

this isn't bad y'know. creativity as opposed to what u lewd zingah, shd she still be doing dippy choralpop

the wig-out sounds like limp bizkit covering miles davis

"There are countless examples from the last few years of songs that have been in high rotation, that have little to no artistic worth, but are just plain rude."

One Direction: "I'm sorry, does this chair have your name on it? (I don't see any name on it)"

xp otm, unmistakeable rotting musk of bill laswell if i didnt know better

man, she sounds a lot better now than she did as a kid (and I was never super critical of her kid opera voice the way some of peers were)

unmistakeable rotting musk of bill laswell

haha.
ok that made me listen ..
cruel. but fair.