There is a lot of beautiful music on that record, but I can't get away with his voice at all.

He's got lost among the Paulo Nutinis and Ray LaMontagnes (another WATN? contender) and other singer/songwriter types. Perhaps it's that he just wasn't that great.

An outstanding record. Flavour of the month on Radio 2 for a while.
Sad to think that good artists can be chewed up and spat out like that.
Just goes to show that if pop music was ever about longevity and giving interesting people a fair crack of the whip, it certainly isn't now.

Agree that that sort of article- focussing on those who maybe have made classic management mistakes or just been in the wrong place and what they are doing to deal with it would be very interesting

May even for those involved flush out a few ideas/offers/options

...some successful business guys who are willing to fund his next stage of recording - these clearly see some opportunity to make cash.
But on the other hand a recent posting of mine regarding some reissues from the label we're talking about - have taken awhile to come out as there is still money owed on the original recordings and the deal had to reflect that.

Whither Midlake? I occasionally google 'midlake new album' and don't come up with anything. Does anybody out there know anything? Please?

are (were?) far better than Elbow - imho - whilst pursuing a similar musical path.

Plus my daughter loved their album. Disconcerting though to hear your angelic 6 year old singing along to the lyrics of "People Help The People".

To wit - "those Hardfaced Queens of misadventure - God knows what is hiding in those weak and sunken eyes"

Their comment on the situation appears literate and balanced. Good story I reckon. Statement pasted below:

Cherry Ghost and the collapse of the music business as we knew it
Hello all, just thought we'd update you on what's going on in the world of Cherry Ghost.

If anyone is wondering why the cherryghost.co.uk website has not been updated for over a year, it's because it's controlled by EMI with whom we are no longer associated.

If anyone is wondering why they haven't received any updates from our emailing list, it's because that is also controlled by EMI and they won't let us have the list.

We will set up a new emailing list in the next few months once we are closer to finally finishing the second album. The album will be finished by the end of this year and will be released in 2010.

(Also, if the mysterious person who updates our wikipedia page reads this, we didn't record the new album in Berlin, we recorded it in a barn near Warrington instead. Thanks for doing the wikipedia thing though whoever you are.)

Thanks very much to everyone who came to our sold out shows in Manchester and London in September. The shows were just to dip our toes back into live waters, but we really enjoyed them. We feel we are a better band than we were when we last toured. We will tour properly again next year when are closer to releasing the album. In the current absence of an emailing list please keep an eye on our myspace for details of future gigs as and when we finalise them.

In the meantime, we have been posting up previews of some of the new tracks in an unmixed state ie they are not quite the final fully polished versions. We have been very busy working on this material for the last two years, in between playing wi tennis and jumpers for goalposts (google it).

In between that we've been contending with the collapse of the record industry as we know it. There is plenty of debate on this elsewhere on the web, but suffice to say that whilst the industry is belatedly beginning to reshape itself to an environment where music is freely and instantly available as digital data, it is - in this period of adjustment - a massive pain in the arse for those of us caught up in the middle of it. For the last 40 years record labels have been the gatekeepers through which musicians operate and engage with the wider world. That is no longer the case, and it's no more fun for the people who work at the labels than it is for the artists themselves.

As has been pointed out recently by the not normally reliable Lily Allen, this is making it very difficult for new artists to emerge and develop what they do without being subject to massive amounts of commercial and critical pressure - and being axed if they don't instantly meet it. Contrary to popular myth, most music does not emerge fully formed and graced with genius. Instead it's the result of hours of graft writing songs, hours of graft knocking said songs into shape in the rehearsal room, and hours of graft trying to make the recording sound as good as it sounds in your head. It also involves making mistakes along the way, and being prepared to learn from those mistakes to improve what you do.

Looking back on it we don't think our first album was perfect, but it's a debut, it did it's job, made it's mark and we've since learned from making that album and have been working on something considerably better. We are rather keen to finish this second album off and unveil it to people. We believe it will be worth the effort on our part and worth the wait on yours the audiences part. We believe it deserves to be heard.

All support has been and still is massively appreciated,

Thanks,

CG

logging in at all hours counts as true dedication to the cause.

... of the music business, and would love to see an article on the lesser/never-seen musicians who aren't stars, but still make a living from music. This could include former major label artists now doing it themselves (a la Cherry Ghost) a tribute act, one of those perma-gigging outfits like The Hamsters of Dumpy's Rusty Nuts, session musicians, and so on.

And I love "Thirst For Romance," a great album.

I'm happy to join the Cherry Ghost love-in. But weren't they signed to Heavenly? I realise that most of Heavenly's records go straight through EMI but some don't. And if they (Jeff and Robin) love good music as much as they seem to, shouldn't they be putting the new album out themselves, or looking for someone else to license it to?

I just strayed across this blog and I am from said band (CG). Very flattering that we should have become a talking point and never one to pass up the opportunity to play a martyr, however, it really isn't that much a hard luck story. The EMI gravy train ground to a halt and they downsized their roster to cater for a more mainstream market. We were offered a pitiful amount of money to make the 2nd album with them. Due to the success of the first we could afford to make the album ourselves and tout it around for a much more favourable royalty rate.
End result was we made a much better album, with a much more dynamic and interesting label incorporating Heavenly once again. It's released on 5th July and is currently being played on the radio. Yes it's been tough at times, but what isn't ? See you out there. Sx

Fantastic to see a post from you round here. I can't wait to hear your record.

The Lexington on 22nd June also. I saw them live in Camden in 2007 and they were very good.

David comments: You have to spread that money across many different market sectors: bit in pop, bit in metal, bit in hip hop, bit in indie, bit aimed at the middle market and so forth.

No you don't.

Just as The Word aims at a certain part of the market (witness the low coverage for death metal, bluegrass and avant garde modernism) so EMI should think about what market it is in. Many businesses are realising today they need to be huge or they need to be a very good niche player. The middle ground is disappearing and/or totally unprofitable. If they think any act or song will succeed, go with it. But they should focus their main efforts on a few genres and be really, really good at it.

And they should also think about what "music business" means. Does it incorporate recorded and live? Does it include artist management? What distribution channels does it embrace?