Venue:

Cambridge Junction

Date: 28/04/2016

Super Furry Animals were never ones for straight-faced rock, and their triumphant, surreal gig at the Cambridge Junction last night left the crowd grinning from ear to ear.

It was more than 20 years since they’d played the small venue (and a similar amount of time since I’d last seen them live), and there was a lot of Furry love in the room (I should rephrase that, it sounds deeply dubious). The tank-loving, Welsh space rockers play music that rouses the soul, and a greatest hits set from this lot was always going to be something special.

Bedecked in white boiler suits, in front of a psychedelic backdrop, framed by dry ice and old skool lasers, and holding placards demanding such things as PROLONGED APPLAUSE, the Furries were on playful form. But for all the deadpan humour (‘Shout out if you’re from somewhere obscure? No? Catchment area, then!’, a hilariously anticipatory pause and heckle back and forth before *that* line in Hello Sunshine, and Gruff Rhys taking over the Paul McCartney celery-munching duties on Receptacle For The Respectable), it was the music that took flight.

If you can open your set with this run » Continue Reading.

Venue:

The Stables, Wavendon

Date: 26/04/2016

Tonight’s gig kicked off with an excellent set from Astrid Williamson, a Scottish singer who I’d somehow lost track of after her great debut solo album Boy For You, way back in the day. She’s clocked up another six solo albums in the proceeding two decades, and her voice has aged beautifully – deeper, but just as subtly powerful. Her set showed off her knack for writing powerful, dreamy songs, a sound not a million miles away from headliner Kathryn’s.

The two are mates, travelling around for the tour in Kathryn’s VW Polo, with the back seats down to cram in their bags and equipment, staying at fans’ homes and Air B & B – ing it. And they join up on stage too: Astrid returned for Kathryn’s set, to play piano and provide minimalist backing vocals. The pairing works well, their voices really complimenting eachother, and the keyboard adding an extra layer to Kathryn’s delicate guitar work.

But the main event, the pivot around which the evening revolves, is of course Kathryn’s compelling voice. I’ve loved her on record since she’s been making them, but somehow never seen her live before » Continue Reading.

Venue:

Bedford Esquires

Date: 23/04/2016

You Can’t Go Back If There’s Nothing To Go Back To will be Richmond Fontaine’s last album and this tour will be their final one, after 20 years together. I saw frontman and songwriter Willy Vlautin play with his other project The Delines a year or so ago (and have been greedily devouring the Richmond Fontaine back catalogue ever since), and this looked my my first and last chance to see the original band play live. A gig upstairs at Bedford Esquires, a small venue with a bar-room feel, seemed like the perfect place.

The group play a sometimes dreamy, sometimes hard-edged kind of alt country, fuelled and fanned by Vlautin’s evocative tales of the American underclass. His songs are essentially short stories: each track plunges you into a world of deftly-drawn characters. Their troubles (missing brothers, impending jail sentences, drug and alcohol addictions, dreams of a better life) are all utterly convincing. This isn’t ‘my dog died, my wife left me, and dammit my haemorrhoids have flared up again’ cliché. It’s real, it’s touching, and you see the neon-lit streets and dusty trailer parks through their eyes, and understand and feel their longing. » Continue Reading.