Last night Joe Goddard - the largest member of Hot Chip - released his first solo album, Harvest Festival. The themed launch party was at Pure Groove record store, so I went down with a few friends to see what was going on.
Back at my old primary school we used to celebrate harvest festival. As memory serves, some time in the autumn term we’d get a letter encouraging our parents to dig around in the back of their cupboards and fish out any spare (and usually expired) tinned goods. The purpose being to celebrate the year’s bountiful harvest; distilling generations of now forgotten Anglo-Saxon tradition into a few odd gestures such as placing our tinned corn etc. on a decorated table during assembly and sing hymns.
Joe’s album seems to have been compiled in a similar way. Tracks are little acorns that he has squirreled away over the years while working on other projects, and are now dusted down and brought together for this celebration of his music. It’s a really lovely album and you should probably go out and buy it.
Joe Goddard - Sour Grapes
Here are some pictures from the launch party, which include apple bobbing and wet girls.
Harvest festival bunting was put up with cut out pineapples and other fruit.
Joe played a great set which he sprinkled with tracks form Harvest Festival and the new Hot Chip album. By the way, any Hot Chip fans out there, the first single from the new album ‘I Feel Better’ sounds great. It’s a huge euro-pop anthem that sounds like it should be on a NOW! comp. (in a good way), and climaxes with steal drums. So good!
The highlight of the evening though was the apple bobbing. We all got stuck in.
My housemate Jim was the first to capture an apple. For his trouble he got a wet face, a free copy of Joe’s Apple Bobbing LP, and of course an apple. Half time oranges were also passed around later in the evening - we definitely got our 5-a-day.
Next, Sasha had a go. Always unorthodox, her technique was to trap the apple between the bottom of the bucket and her face, meaning she had to submerge her whole head underwater.
She was adamant that it was well worth it. Plus she turned the whole thing into a wet t-shirt competition.
Not wanting to miss out I also bagged myself an apple and an LP…
…which I then got signed. Total success!
