We lead such exciting lives, AKA "Phil's Album of the Week, pt 1"

It must have happened to every blogger out there. It comes to Monday, time for a new post, and we come to that unfortunate point of realising that we have done just about nothing of note since our last post! Yes, I (Gethin) have moved house (watch out Tooting...), and there's been the usual neverending conversations trying to organise our diaries (so no change there!), but other than that life in the world of ATC has been a little dull. To be fair, this is mainly due to snow cancelling rehearsals, and inept promoters cancelling gigs, but we promise to try harder to be interesting in the future!

Anyway, in place of our lack of news, we've decided to put Phil's famous (check out www.folking.com) reviewing skills to the test, and see if he can cobble together an "Album of the Week" feature every Monday. And yes, we know, you're probably all inundated with people telling you what to listen to, but we promise it will be good! And to keep you interested, we've decided to put Thursday's updates aside for a chance to find out more about us, with some interesting stories from our lives. Well, we might do anyway, or we might just rant and talk about whatever we fancy, but we promise that you'll find out about Adrian's wigs, Ben's drunken antics and Emma's stalkers at some point...

Anyway, without further ado, I give you Mr. Daniels!

Phil’s Album of the Week
OK – far be it from me to dictate what you people should and shouldn’t listen to (I try to with the others but they generally just ignore me or have already come up with a reason why they think my suggestion is shit), hopefully you’ll find the odd gem in my ever increasing CD collection.

My first is an album that has been out a while, but is still relevant due to a re-release with their original EP added as a bonus disk. I’m talking about Fleet Foxes, by (funnily enough) Fleet Foxes.

This album has basically taken the music world by storm, figuring highly in all major music publications top 10’s of 2008 – and unsurprising really, as if you can find a better interpretation of Californian Americana out at the moment, I’ll eat my hat (if I actually owned one – but I’m sure Ben has a spare Stetson available).

Brilliant harmonies all the way through, blatantly inspired by Crosby, Stills and Nash - classic Americana instrumentation but without a pedal steel or a banjo in site – and in Robin Pecknold, have someone with the potential lyrical and arranging talent of Dylan or Neil Young. It’s a winning combination that will serve this band well for hopefully years to come.

Stand out tracks are the staggering ‘Mykonos’, which you’ll find on the EP and also ‘White Winter Hymnal’ and ‘He Doesn’t Know Why’ on the main record.

And – considering this is only £8.99 in most record shops (well – HMV, as lets face it that is the only record store these days, but that’s a whole other rant you can look forward to), it’s worth the investment.

I’ll be writing about all sorts on this page – not just folk tinged records, however if folk, roots and acoustic music is your cup of tea, visit the great Mike Wilson’s blog at www.mikewilsonmusicblog.blogspot.com for some excellent in-depth reviews of both albums and gigs.