Tired Pony

[TickingClock]

You're welcome. :nice:

 

Don't ask me why they are insane enough to play two concerts in one night, but oh well ... Coldplay was amazing at the War Child gig after the Brits (it was the Brits, right? :thinking:), so I have no doubt Tired Pony will be as enthusiastic as they were.

 

Anna, I can neither go to London nor to the Tired Pony concert(s), so I feel with you. But as much as I know, the band hopes to do a little tour, so we'll may catch up with them sometime this year. Although we might not get to see Tom Smith performing with them which might happen at these two first gigs. :\

[SueDeNimes]

Insane indeed!

 

Yes, it was after the Brits. :blush:

 

If they make a tour I hope they'll come to a place not that far from where I live because I'll be so incredibly broke for the rest of the year!!

I hope the weather up where you live is better than here and you have a nice day! :nice:

[TickingClock]

It is nice, as least I like the weather here. It rained all day though, so many might not actually like that. :rolleyes:

 

I guess if Snow Patrol don't go on tour before 2011 and all the other bands of Tired Pony members have a break this year, we have good chances to see Tired Pony live. But if you ask me, they certainly only tour the UK and maybe some places in the US. :dozey: As if the rest of Europe other than the UK and Ireland would absolutely hate country-ish music.

I have my fingers crossed that there'll be a proper little tour. :smug:

[Ilione]

@Anna: Oh, what a pity that you'll fly home one day prior to the gig. :\ It'd have been awesome to meet up in London again! :) I'll have to talk with my friend who'll come along and see when we'll arrive. We haven't booked flights or anything just yet as we're still rather busy with the Amsterdam-trip, but I guess we'll plan our stay in London afterwards, so I'll let you know in case we'll be in London earlier than the 14th. :)

 

 

I just "accidently" found out that you can actually listen to one of the tracks ("Point me at lost islands") on the official Tired Pony site! :wideeyed: It's one of the songs of which you could hear a tiny snippet in the video... Now you can enjoy it in all its glory! :nice:

Just had a listen to it and well, what can I say? I loved the snippet and I certainly love the whole song already! :heart: I especially love the guitars, I don't know why... And you can hear strings towards the end! I must admit that they took me by surprise and I guess that's the "country-feeling" to it then. :lol: I like the sound, though. :nice:

[TickingClock]

In case it should disappear from the Tired Pony site, it's on YouTube now.

 

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WKmT6Qd5vqo]YouTube- Point me at Lost Islands - Tired Pony[/ame]

 

I can't belive I waited the whole day for it. :lol: I kept closing and opening the 'Listen to Point Me At Lost Islands' frame to listen to it over and over again.

It's up on YouTube for only 13 minutes by now.

 

Madness already ... :laugh4:

[PolarMonkey]

ah, now i know what's the name of 1 of the songs that i liked in that intro video! :)

 

i'm still wondering how that person on some online music blog (i think it was) got to review the entire album well before anyone else...i haven't seen any other reviews of it online aside from that 1 person's. hmmm.......... :thinking:

[TickingClock]

Would you be so nice and post that review, please? :) If you can still find it. Maybe we can find out some further information together.

[PolarMonkey]

managed to Google it up! :)

 

here's the link (review score is 4/5!) : http://www.beehivecity.com/music/first-listen-the-place-we-ran-from-by-tired-pony085006/

[Technicolor Sparks]

I'm soooo excited for the album!! Point Me At Lost Islands is up on youtube (it's on their website, but since it's on youtube I was able to convert it to mp3 :dance:)!

[merryberry9]

Bianca - thanks for ALL those updates - you are way up to date on all this news - LOVE IT! :) and for posting "Point me at Lost Islands". I have to admit that when I hear it was going to be country rock i was a little weary but i LOVE that song. Can't wait to hear the whole album!

 

Such a shame no one seems to be able to go to the concert. I hope they manage to get out of the UK and hit up places like err uh Germany/New England! :)

[TickingClock]

Bianca - thanks for ALL those updates - you are way up to date on all this news - LOVE IT! :) and for posting "Point me at Lost Islands". I have to admit that when I hear it was going to be country rock i was a little weary but i LOVE that song. Can't wait to hear the whole album!

 

Such a shame no one seems to be able to go to the concert. I hope they manage to get out of the UK and hit up places like err uh Germany/New England! :)

You're welcome, Meredith! :nice:

And Elena is going to see them ... :wacky:

 

Thanks for posting the review, Kim! But somehow I still don't believe that person got the whole album. Is BeehiveCity a popular site? Why should they get it before every one else? :thinking:

The only thing that makes me wonder is that mentioned line from Northwestern Skies. If they kept the tracklisting in the preview like on the album, then this particular line doesn't appear in the video. So that'd be the proof that BeehiveCity has the whole album. But I'll have a closer listen to the video again.

Moreover I don't find the review usefull. :dozey: Seeing that they gave the album four out of five stars they pretty much bitch about the music. Plus: You don't really get an impression on the album and are not animated to buy it, are you? A bit of a fail, in my opinion ...

 

Am I the only one being extremly distracted by the fact that this site is called BeehiveCity? :uhoh:

[PolarMonkey]

You're welcome, Meredith! :nice:

And Elena is going to see them ... :wacky:

 

Thanks for posting the review, Kim! But somehow I still don't believe that person got the whole album. Is BeehiveCity a popular site? Why should they get it before every one else? :thinking:

The only thing that makes me wonder is that mentioned line from Northwestern Skies. If they kept the tracklisting in the preview like on the album, then this particular line doesn't appear in the video. So that'd be the proof that BeehiveCity has the whole album. But I'll have a closer listen to the video again.

Moreover I don't find the review usefull. :dozey: Seeing that they gave the album four out of five stars they pretty much bitch about the music. Plus: You don't really get an impression on the album and are not animated to buy it, are you? A bit of a fail, in my opinion ...

 

Am I the only one being extremly distracted by the fact that this site is called BeehiveCity? :uhoh:

 

i'm going too... :wacky: ...tho i bet Elena's got better seats than me! hehe :dance:

 

anyway, i can't really remember how in the world i stumbled upon this review. i personally don't think it's that popular a website...but then, i generally don't read music reviews. tho i know that music reviewers get advanced promo copies of albums, but it's still odd since this review was done so soon (2mths ahead?) and remains the only review around so far. tho based on the About page, if the site's really run by someone who was the "media editor of The Times for five years", i'd assume they'd know better than to put out a bogus advance review. :confused:

 

& i think it might've stuck in my otherwise goldfish memory partly because of the Beehive name too (so you're not the only one who's distracted there...heh ;) ). also noticed the bitching about the album tone...which kind of doesn't fit the 4/5 rating & seems confusing. tho the reference to Set Fire to the Third Bar as "that third bar on the fire song" seems to indicate that the writer isn't much of a SP fan, so there shouldn't be any pro-SP bias.

[TickingClock]

Besides that, the song with Zoey Deschanell doesn't sound much like Set Fire To The Third Bar. It's a duett, fine. It's a male and a female voice, fine again. Gary is involved in the production - not so much of an argument, really. He doesn't even sing in this song, does he? And moreover there's currently no proof that he even wrote that song (the Tired Pony one). I mean, on his own, alone. Why should he copy his own work anyway?

 

I don't know, that review upsets me ... :rolleyes:

[Black Rose]

I would have a guess that review is fake

[TickingClock]

That's what I think.

[Black Rose]

An album like this would be under AAA type security, probably won't even be review tapes sent to the reviewers they would probably have to go to the HQ of the record label to listen to the album

[TickingClock]

Sounds logically. And I really hope it's under 'AAA type security' because as much as I await this album, I really don't want it to be leaked.

[Black Rose]

Sadly the vast majority of albums leak these days

[PolarMonkey]

i was told sometimes albums do get sent out well before the release date if the label wanted to build up the anticipation for it. tho seeing as this review is the only one around, i don't think that's the case here. guess we'll only know for sure how "accurate" this supposed preview is once more previews/reviews start cropping up, which i don't think will happen til much nearer to date.

[TickingClock]

Found another review. Or something like a review. It's a mixture of a review and an interview about Tired Pony.

 

 

The Place We Ran From

 

While some people have imaginary friends, Gary Lightbody has imaginary bands. He gives them names and song titles. Just occasionally, they become real.

 

Already the singer and guitarist in Snow Patrol, one night at a Lou Barlow show in Glasgow, Gary imagined The Reindeer Section. The next day he refused to let any of the 20-odd people he’d drunkenly approached forget that they’d promised to join. The circumstances of Tired Pony’s formation were different, but conceptually it’s the same: another of Gary’s dreams that happened to come true.

 

It was during idle moments on Snow Patrol’s year-long tour cycle for their last album, A Hundred Million Suns, that Gary could be found in dressing rooms or at the back of the tour bus, strumming away at songs he already knew wouldn’t fit on a Snow Patrol album. Seven of the songs that we now find on The Place We Ran From were written during this period. Having earlier in the year hinted at his ambition to form a country band, Gary unveiled a Tired Pony song to the wider world when Snow Patrol visited Portland in October 2009, saying he’d written it the previous day and that it was “inspired by Portland”. Called I Finally Love This Town, even in solo acoustic form the song had a spectral quality quite distinct from Snow Patrol. And it would be to Portland where Gary returned in January of this year, barely three weeks after the end of Snow Patrol’s retrospective Reworked tour, to record an album.

 

The cast of characters who assembled at Portland’s Type Foundry studio on January 4, 201o reflected the roots that Gary Lightbody’s maintained from musical adolescence in Northern Ireland, through relocating to Scotland, and up to his subsequent mainstream rock success. From the extended Snow Patrol family there was Troy Stewart, the band’s guitar technician, whose contributions exemplified the project’s keynote features of freedom and surprise. Then Iain Archer, long-time Snow Patrol associate and collaborator, and a singer-songwriter in his own right. Richard Colburn is renowned as the drummer with Belle & Sebastian, but he’s known Gary since playing for Polarbear, an embryonic version of Snow Patrol. Richard has been playing percussion and keys live with Snow Patrol ever since whenever he can. Next, Garret ‘Jacknife’ Lee, in many ways the pivotal figure in the whole Tired Pony escapade. A close confidant of Gary’s since becoming Snow Patrol’s producer from the commercial breakthrough of 2003’s album Final Straw onwards, it was Garret who brought in the Tired Pony band’s final two members: Peter Buck from R.E.M. and Scott McCaughey, the Seattle musical polymath who’s been R.E.M.’s full-time auxiliary member since 1994.

 

By the time the collective began work, it was clear Gary’s initial hunch that he might make a country record had been superseded by something far less simple and much more mysterious.

 

“I wanted to make a very American record,” he says. “It’s inspired by my love of Wilco, Calexico, Lambchop, Palace, Smog, these bands that look at the darkness in America. I wanted to write a twisted love-letter to the States. This is the first record I’ve written that isn’t about me and my love-life, primarily. These are all stories, told in the first person I guess, but not necessarily with me in the central role, just me talking through various characters. I don’t do that ever. I just wanted to approach this record totally differently. It’s certainly different to Snow Patrol that’s for sure. It’s a very natural record. It was recorded with everybody sitting around a few microphones, all first or second takes, warts and all. There’s a kind of haphazard tenderness to the record that I really enjoyed.”

 

In practical terms Buck and McCaughey’s presence helped dictate the Tired Pony ethos. First up, they found the studio, and tapped their vast reservoir of local contacts for guest contributors: perhaps most notably, M. Ward, whose woozy guitar on Held In The Arms Of Your Words Gary considers his favourite performance of the entire record (Ward’s She & Him partner Zooey Deschanel also sings harmony on Get On The Road); there’s pedal steel guitar player Paul Brainard and stand-up bassist Fred Chalenor (with whom Buck had played alongside Robert Fripp); and by no means least, the She Bee Gees, a local female Bee Gees covers band. Then there’s the simple fact that it’s easier to do an album of loose, near-improvised live recordings when two of the musicians are of such calibre.

 

Peter Buck believes the circumstances of the album’s creation greatly contributed to its awestruck, widescreen quality. “The Type Foundry is one big loft, it used to be a printing firm, and it’s really long and really spacious. So we all just set up in the room, didn’t worry much about separation, did a lot of ambient miking, and then performed it all live. And the songs were so new to Gary and totally new to us, that there’s that kind of feel of not really directing, it’s playing and the song is occurring as you play and you’re not really knowing what you’re doing. Essentially, Gary would go, ‘This is the verse and this is the chorus,’ and then we’d go, OK let’s go. Structurally they’re not super-complicated, it’s really just a matter of us feeling what the songs needed. I don’t think we ever did three takes. We did a whole lot of them in one.”

 

In the context of Gary Lightbody’s previous work, everything about this beguiling, beautifully low-key, yet still quite intense album validates the opening line of the opening song Northwestern Skies: “It’s not like it was before”. Were this a mere rock star vanity project, The Place We Ran From would have shaped up far differently. For a start, arguably its best song was actually written and sung by someone else: Iain Archer’s I Am A Landslide. Then there’s The Good Book, which although a Gary Lightbody song, was sung by Tom Smith of Editors, who’s a perfect fit for the narrative’s gothic weave of guilt and redemption. By the very nature of the beast, all Tired Pony’s members have other things to do. But there are plans to take to the road this summer as and when their schedules permit. Peter Buck would be the first to admit he’s played in a lot of one-off projects which have made records in a week or less, and not all of them have ended up this good.

 

“It felt really powerful and emotional, and also real free,” he says. “I don’t know if Gary went into it planning it to be something that was to last longer than the week of recording, but it certainly felt at the end of the week like it was a band, and that this was a good place to start. It would be crazy not to pursue this.”

 

It’s a record that begins quietly, and ends with a four-minute feedback storm. There are any number of peak moments within. Anyone who thinks they know what the singer from Snow Patrol’s extra-curricular activity will sound like is going to be surprised. Not least because Gary Lightbody himself is surprised too.

 

“We were just a bunch of guys making a record for fun. There was nothing really to shoot for except what we want to do. Nobody’s looking over our shoulder. We were making a record in our own little bubble. And it was so much fun.”

 

Tired Pony Contact : [email protected]

 

Source: qprime.com

 

If anyone's interested in booking them - within the US or internationally - you'll find the e-mail addresses over there. :lol:

[TickingClock]

From Q Magazine.

 

[SueDeNimes]

So the new one?

Did you already get it?

I'm still waiting for my copy. :thinking:

Hurry up, mail man! :whip:

[TickingClock]

No, I found the scan on the interenet.

 

I even missed the last one with Coldplay. :dozey: So maybe I'll catch THAT one instead.

[SueDeNimes]

I have a subscription, it's even not that expensive!!

Before that I bought it every time I've been in the UK or the lovely Carol bought it for me. :kiss:

 

Can you get it where you live?

Nowhere available here!

[TickingClock]

We have an international newspaper shop here where I read all British magazines which I unfortunately can't afford. Q Magazine usually is around twelve Euro here. The Rolling Stone from the US is a bit cheaper, most of the time at around nine Euro.

 

I thought of a subscription as well but I decided it would be a bad idea for me for I freak out everytime I get a Q Magazine because of all the brilliant concerts they advertise for the UK. :(