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Newton Faulkner: dreadlock holiday

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Not since the Beach Boys have surfers been so well served by pop, but this summer, thanks to British singer-songwriter Newton Faulkner, they'll be riding the waves to a new tune.

With his snaking dreadlocks, goatee beard and mellow acoustic sound, the 22-year-old looks every bit the laidback dude who whiles away the hours waxing his board. The reality is that he's a well-spoken landlubber from near Reigate, but that hasn't stopped him from capturing the hearts of Britain's surfers, one of the most enthusiastic band of music fans in the country.

Last June, Faulkner made the pilgrimage to Cornwall, spiritual home of surfing, for a single support slot in Truro with Californian musician (and genuine surfer) Donavon Frankenreiter. His efforts were appreciated by the locals, to say the least.

"After that one gig the traffic on my MySpace page went completely nuts," he tells me. "So I booked another week of shows down there later in the summer, and ended up staying for a second week because I kept getting asked to play more."

As he demonstrates on his third single, I Need Something (out 7 May, on Ugly Truth Records), Faulkner's sound is simple and relaxed, based on dextrous plucking of his acoustic guitar and his gentle croon - though he can also burst into percussive beating of the body of his guitar and lively scatting. It's campfire music, basically, a British counterpart to the sunny sounds of that huge-selling Hawaiian Jack Johnson.

Johnson, a former surf champion, won a Brit Award last year after the worldwide success of the soulful acoustic funk of his third album, In Between Dreams. You'll be mistaken if you think he's gone quiet since then - he may not be recording but he's been working on his own record label, Brushfire, and made it home to plenty of musicians who sound just like him.

Frankenreiter started out on the label, and new albums from former Beastie Boys keyboard player Money Mark (who plays the ICA on Tuesday) and veteran bluesman G Love (who plays Koko on 22 May) have also sacrificed their earlier styles to absorb Johnson's summery vibe. Spend some time in a surf shop, or a backpacker hostel, or anywhere in Australia, and you'll soon know every song by these artists off by heart.

Faulkner admittedly has no direct connection to this lot, having discovered his style at the feet of the late Eric Roche, head of guitar at the Academy of Contemporary Music, near Guildford, and author of The Acoustic Guitar Bible. "In terms of inspiration, I was always more into people like Django Reinhardt and Tom Waits," Faulkner admits. Yet he seems to have arrived at a similar sound to Johnson and his empire none the less. And it's one that everyone seems to love - we can expect his record sales to be even bigger than his hair very soon indeed.

NEW ON THE NET
With speculation mounting that Amazon is to launch its own download store, possibly as soon as next month, iTunes might finally have a genuine challenger to its 80 per cent market share. In the meantime, Apple's digital shop still tempts, particularly with a new live EP from extraordinary harpist Joanna Newsom (right) entitled Joanna Newsom & The Ys Street Band. It features first new material since her last LP topped virtually every album of 2006 list.

It also has the debut album from buzzy indie rockers The Maccabees, Colour It In, several weeks before it hits the shops, at a genuine bargain price of £5.49. Amazon will struggle to top that, although unlike Apple, its tracks are expected to be free of copying restrictions.

Finally, if your MP3 player is worryingly free of awkward bands answering questions in an excruciatingly stilted manner, look out for the Arctic Monkeys' first podcast, available from tomorrow at www.mtv.co.uk/ gonzo. Hopefully it'll also include plenty of music from the excellent new album.

You can never have too much Bob Dylan
He may just have played Wembley Arena, but Dylan nuts needn't occupy themselves alphabetising their collections until the next time his Never Ending Tour rolls around. There's plenty of Dylan material to explore at the moment, including a new exhibition of Elliott Landy's photographs of him in Woodstock at the Exposure Gallery, W1.

More enticingly, a gorgeous new two-disc edition of DA Pennebaker's 1967 documentary, Don't Look Back, is released on DVD on Monday, including the remastered original plus a new hour-long film, 65 Revisited, of unseen footage and a dinky flipbook recreating the famous cue-card routine Dylan performed for Subterranean Homesick Blues.

Pennebaker's verite document of Dylan's 1965 tour of the UK showed a musical genius who could be nasty at times, throwing hotel room tantrums and baiting journalists. In 65 Revisited, he's having a bit more fun, trying on loud ties in a Newcastle clothes shop, letting an interviewer wear his sunglasses ("See the world how Bob Dylan sees it!") and teasing his manager, Albert Grossman ("You're very salty today, Albert").

There's much more music, too, with footage of him at the piano singing a rare track, I'll Keep It With Mine, and on stage strumming songs in full, including To Ramona and Don't Think Twice, It's All Right.

It's another fascinating hour that leaves us no closer to understanding the enigma's enigma. But that's all part of the fun.

AN EARLY LISTEN TO ...
EDITORS
An End Has a Start
(Kitchenware)
It seems that once you play a stadium, you can never go back. After the Killers and Kings of Leon, Birmingham's Editors are the latest indie band to be so dazzled by a support slot with U2 that they have added a huge new expansiveness to their music. The quartet's second album, released 25 June, seems designed to be heard at the very back of the new Wembley, thunderous new songs such as Escape the Nest and the first single, Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors, demonstrating an ambition not noted when they were first dismissed as Joy Division copyists in
2005. Produced by Garret "Jacknife" Lee, architect of the sound of megaselling Snow Patrol - and, yes, U2 - it retains their characteristic bleakness, but with a rush of big guitars that nonetheless will generate a crowd-pleasing feeling of elation.

 

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