Dot To Dot Festival

The News Review:

- Dot To Dot Festival
- ‘Sex’ on Page 1
- The Twangfest 12 finale will be an unforgetable experience

Dot To Dot Festival
NME.com – Jun 5, 2008
Dirty Pretty Things make up for their lack of crowd-communication back in Rock City by grinning from ear to ear as a never-ending wave of crowd-surfers re-enact plate tectonics during ?Bang Bang You?re Dead?. The songs from forthcoming album ?Romance At Short Notice? too are well received but it?s in The Rescue Rooms that Chrome Hoof explode with real volcanic vigour rounding off the night with the weekend?s most spectacular performance. Sunday lunchtime sees Nottingham punk leviathans Lovvers thrash out punters? nasty hangovers in Rock City proving it?s never too early to FUCK SHIT UP. There?s more brain-bending over at Trent uni where London B-movie beatniks Haunts mix Hammer-horror synths with insistently catchy pop hooks that?ll either pave their path to stardom or confuse the hell out of everyone. Mystery Jets prove they?ve done away with the irritating wonky indie of their first album and win over a new legion of fans with their more exciting second album of certified wonky pop. A mass singalong greets ?Young Love? while ?Two Doors Down? stakes its claim as single of 2008… Dirty Pretty Things make up for their lack of crowd-communication back in Rock City by grinning from ear to ear as a never-ending wave of crowd-surfers re-enact plate tectonics during ?Bang Bang You?re Dead?. The songs from forthcoming album ?Romance At Short Notice? too are well received but it?s in The Rescue Rooms that Chrome Hoof explode with real volcanic vigour rounding off the night with the weekend?s most spectacular performance. Sunday lunchtime sees Nottingham punk leviathans Lovvers thrash out punters? nasty hangovers in Rock City proving it?s never too early to FUCK SHIT UP. There?s more brain-bending over at Trent uni where London B-movie beatniks Haunts mix Hammer-horror synths with insistently catchy pop hooks that?ll either pave their path to stardom or confuse the hell out of everyone. Mystery Jets prove they?ve done away with the irritating wonky indie of their first album and win over a new legion of fans with their more exciting second album of certified wonky pop. A mass singalong greets ?Young Love? while ?Two Doors Down? stakes its claim as single of 2008.

‘Sex’ on Page 1
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette – Pittsburgh Post Gazette – Jun 5, 2008
I will be 40 this year and it is just a shame for lack of a better word that no performer or group has been able to capture what the “elder” groups or persons have. To me music started to die when Nirvana and Pearl Jam came along. Not that they weren’t influential (giving credit where it is due) to new “musicians” and the death of glam metal but it ushered in a new genre of “let’s just make money” type of music. All the boy bands and the Hannah Montanas are just crap. No soul no meaning no true fun unless you are a pre-teen. I look at what is out there now — Fall Out Boy Jonas Brothers etc… I will be 40 this year and it is just a shame for lack of a better word that no performer or group has been able to capture what the “elder” groups or persons have. To me music started to die when Nirvana and Pearl Jam came along. Not that they weren’t influential (giving credit where it is due) to new “musicians” and the death of glam metal but it ushered in a new genre of “let’s just make money” type of music. All the boy bands and the Hannah Montanas are just crap. No soul no meaning no true fun unless you are a pre-teen. I look at what is out there now — Fall Out Boy Jonas Brothers etc. — and to me it’s nothing more than garage bands that will not be around in another five years or less.

The Twangfest 12 finale will be an unforgetable experience
St. Louis Post-Dispatch – Jun 5, 2008
"The trail to country music branched off from punk when Langford and his band mates got bored with that musical genre in the mid-’80s. "Punk rock had become very much of a cul de sac" he says "We always thought it was this thing of being free to do whatever you wanted to do. But by that time actually the industry had gotten a lid on it and decided it was the freedom to have a ridiculous Mohican and wear a leather jacket and do speeded-up heavy metal. "About that time Langford discovered Hank Williams Jimmie Rodgers and Cajun music and then a friend in Chicago sent him a mix tape of George Jones Merle Haggard Ernest Tubb and Hank Thompson… That just really appealed to me. "Langford is not referring to modern mainstream country which he calls "a cowboy hat pop factory" but the country of Haggard Jones and Johnny Cash among others. Indeed he had an art exhibit titled "The Death of Country Music" in Nashville Tenn. in 1998 and thought he’d be run out of town. Instead "people just came down and were like winking at me — ‘Yeah we agree. ‘ It’s one of those things with an industry like that" he says. "You can exist within it and feel removed from it and feel like well ‘I’m not really the problem it’s those other guys that are doing it.