Venue:
The Lantern, Bristol
Date: 09/03/2017
“Hi, I’m Hamilton Leithauser from New York City”. ….Obviously! HL is the former lead-singer of post-punk cult faves The Walkmen (even you must have heard The Rat or Angela Surf City?) – now solo and touring his second album “I Had A Dream That You Were Mine”, co-written with Rostan Batmanglij from Vampire Weekend, whose contribution presumably stretched further than a few VW-ish harpsichord flourishes. It’s a really good album that has grown on me as I’ve listened to it on repeat over the last week or so – I should have rated it higher last year. Hamilton is a big guy with a big voice and he really belts ‘em out as he did in the Walkmen– I wonder how his throat stands it. That said he has some great songs on his own album – much subtler and wistful than might first appear. HL and his band (which included a big piano tonight possibly thanks to the slightly more upmarket venue) rock out for a good hours worth of his current album and its predecessor(“Black Hours”), finishing with a lovely version of 1959 which is a duet on the album but works well solo. And finished just in time for me to get not quite the last train home…
The audience:
Very appreciative and plenty of people seemed to know a lot of the words without going all Elbow. Too cooll to call for Walkmen songs. One guy had gone in the wrong door and thought Laura Marling (playing next door) was the support….she should be so lucky.
It made me think..
Carpet on the floor– quite a contrast to certain other local venues I could name – I’m talking to you Fleece with your squelchy floor, which you could hear during the quieter moments of Meilyr Jones the other night.
who could that be?