Touchstone and The Reasoning–The Duchess, 16/10/12

Sadly, it’s less easy these days for our group to get together as frequently as we used to. The days when we would head off to a pub to see a covers band if nothing else took our fancy are now behind us and that’s where tonight’s support act, Marc Atkinson, is found on a regular basis. But that’s just one string to his bow – as well as having released a small handful of solo albums, with another on the way, Marc is also involved with a number of “side” projects, including Nine Stones Close, Manadalaband and, with Brendan Eyre, the long-gestating Riversea which (finally) saw a stunningly beautiful album released earlier this year. Tonight, instead of his “usual” covers, we were treated to a mixture of tracks from some of these projects, with particular emphasis on his solo and Riversea material. Marc’s lyrics reflect the various aspects of life – childhood, growing up, the effects of religion – and seem to be heavily influenced by his family. His vocals are rich and full of emotion and, despite the fact that it is just him and an acoustic guitar on stage, playing stripped down versions of some of the songs, he soon has a large proportion of the crowd taking notice and applauding each song. in the past, it has been obvious that Marc is adept at entertaining a pub crowd in a party atmosphere. It’s nice to see that his own material is capable of entertaining a normal gig crowd to the same level. Hopefully, there will be more chances in the future to see him perform his own stuff. (There has even been a slight hint, not from Marc, that there may be a chance of seeing a full band version of Riversea perform live, although I’m not sure how serious that was…)
A couple of years ago, The Reasoning featured in my gig of the year. A few months ago, Touchstone played York for the first time and blew me and Roj away. Tonight saw both band’s playing York, thankfully as part of their Adventures In The City co-headlining tour, meaning that we didn’t have to choose between them.
I believe that the bands alternated which would be on stage first throughout the tour. Tonight, it was The Reasoning who played first, coming on stage to a cinematic backing track. The current line-up is quite a bit different from the last time I saw them perform – slimmed down to a five-piece and now with just one guitarist due in part to the sad disappearance of Owain Roberts and, if you believe what you read in some places, the less-than-harmonious departure of Dylan Thompson. Whatever the reasons, though, the band have, on stage at least, put these troubles behind them (or, perhaps more accurately, can ignore them for an hour or so). The single guitar sound allows Tony Turrell’s keyboards to feature a bit more in the mix and it is also Tony who now provides the majority of second/backing vocals. Unfortunately, from where we were standing, Rachel Cohen’s vocals were a little indistinct, meaning that even some of the songs I was familiar with, albeit with slightly different musical arrangements, with took a while to register. That said, there was an energy to her performance which more than made up for the muddiness and some of the crowd obviously recognised the tracks more quickly than I did - Matt Cohen’s somewhat nervously stoic face cracked into a wide grin at the reception that second song Dark Angel received. The set comprised of tracks from the full, four album history of the band, with particular emphasis on the latest album – Adventures In Neverland. Awakening, introduced by a superb keyboard solo which somehow seamlessly included the Benny Hill theme and The Thirteen Hour rubbed shoulders with No Friend Of Mine, Forest Of Hands And Teeth, with its moody opening and a mid-section which gives it a somewhat noirish feel, Adventures In Neverland, whose stunning instrumental section would have convinced me to buy the album if I wasn’t already going to (and did on the night) and Omega Point, which saw the band encroaching on Muse territory with a song about the end of the universe. Audience participation came in the form of Aching Hunger, which also saw Touchstone’s Moo Bass join the band on stage. Between songs, Rachel interacted playfully with the crowd, many of whom it appeared had been to other gigs on the tour, knowing what was coming when the new album and merchandise was being touted. Despite the vocal “issues” this was another brilliant performance by the band.
Touchstone took to the stage with slightly less flamboyance that The Reasoning and, as last time, it seemed to me that vocalist Kim Seviour took a little while to shrug off an apparent nervous air. Initially, she looked slightly wide-eyed and a little stilted in her dancing. She soon got over it, though, and by Shadow her “booty shaking” was a lot more natural. We had moved slightly closer to the stage by now and Kim’s vocals were a lot clearer than Rachel’s. With no new album to promote, this was more of a “best of” set and, again, featured songs from the band’s full back catalogue. If anything, despite being a shorter set, tonight was even better than when we saw them earlier in the year. I’m less familiar with Touchstone’s output than I am with The Reasoning’s and there are were at least two tracks played tonight that I couldn’t identify, but each song played, from Shadow to its sequel Shadows Fall, from Blacktide to Zinomorph and especially the brilliant Wintercoast comes across as an epic, containing a riot of drumming from Henry Rogers, which somehow manages never to overpower the music. Adam Hodgson’s guitar still gives the songs a slightly-more-heavy-than-prog feel while Rob Cottingham’s keyboards manage to help maintain the true prog sound. But, in all honesty, once she has got over her apparent initial nervousness it is Kim, with her banter with the band, introductions to the songs – “I don’t like nasty people, so I write songs about them and sing them passive aggressively..” – her dancing during the instrumentals or the way she peers out from behind her fringe and dark eye makeup, oozing a kind of coy sophistication despite being dressed more for a night on the town than as a rock-chick, with the only concession to the expected image being a single leather wristband, who is queen of the performance.
Finally, both bands and Marc Atkinson returned to the stage for an ensemble encore of Tears For Fears’ Mad World – perhaps the best encore ever.
At a time when femme-fronted prog bands seem to be making a bigger impact than ever, with both these bands, along with Panic Room, having recently signed deals with record labels, it’s nice to see two having such an obvious good time while touring. Hopefully, we will see more of them in the future, either together or on separate tours.

Touched By Genius

Friday 30th March: …and rarely have I been looking forward so much to a gig by a band that I have heard just two tracks from.

According to the Duchess website, tonight’s support comes from the Heather Findlay Duo. I’m not sure how Chris Johnson, the other half of the duo, is meant to take that, especially given that he write half the songs played during tonight’s set (and two of those originally had no connection to Heather) but I guess somebody maybe has to be in the ascendancy. Most of the songs played tonight came from the Live At The Cafe 68 album that the duo, billed as Heather Findlay & Chris Johnson on the cover, officially release in the next few days, but which has been available for purchase since shortly after that gig. It was my favourite live album of last year and I’m pleased to say that, despite tonight’s being a shorter set, a lot of my favourite tracks are still featured. It’s a nice mix of songs from Heather’s Phoenix Suite EP (Phoenix and Running Man) and Odin Dragonfly album (Magpie), Chris’s bands The Evernauts (Out Of Season) and Parade/Halo Blind (The Dogs) and Mostly Autumn (Yellow Time, Blue Light and Silver Glass) all of which are simply accompanied by Chris on guitar and Heather on a variety of shakers and, for Silver Glass, a handheld xylophone. Heather’s voice is crystal-clear and there is an easy camaraderie between the two of them. Best song of the set is The Dogs, which retains it’s evilness even as a stripped-down acoustic track, but the whole set is entertainingly pleasant, if not with quite the intimacy that comes across from the live album.

As an aside, there were a lot of familiar faces in the crowd which wasn’t quite as large as I expected it to be tonight. While it’s nice to see a core group of prog-rock fans who seem, like me, to try to attend all York prog gig, I can’t help but think that some of these bands deserve bigger attendances. Tonight’s gig was, for the headliners, just one of three that they are playing in the near future and was billed by Classic Rock magazine as the gig of the week. (There was even at least one of the magazine’s staff in attendance, which might help deflect recent criticism that gig reviews in sister magazine, Prog, are too London-focussed.) Even so, I wonder if it would have received that acclaim and how many of those who travelled would have done so if Heather hadn’t been supporting.

The headliners were, in fact, Touchstone a five-piece “Progressive(ish) Rock” band from Hertfordshire and this was their first visit to York. They had already released two studio and one live albums, as well as an EP before signing to Steamhammer / SPV for last year’s The City Sleeps (and reissues of all but the live album released just this week). Despite that reasonably large back catalogue, the only exposure I had had to the band was a couple of track released on CDs issued free with Prog magazine. Still, I know what there’s a good chance I’ll like and so had no hesitation in attending tonight’s gig.

Initial impressions were that the music was quite a bit heavier than I expected but without the darkness that can sometimes encroach into heavy-prog. It also seemed that Kim Seviour’s vocals and Rob Cottingham’s backing vocals were being swamped by the music, but that was almost certainly due to my unfamiliarity of the material, especially given that the vocals during Joker In The Pack (one of the two tracks that I had heard) sounded lot clearer. Having said that, the much quieter introduction to the first song of the encore also allowed the vocals to come through a lot more. However, live music isn’t always about the vocals and I was really enjoying the music. Few songs were granted introductions, although there was still a bit of chat between songs, and I doubt my memory is good enough to work out which they were by listening to the full back catalogue I bought on the night (which, even as a bundle package, broke my record for amount spent on CDs at a gig..) so you will have to forgive my vagueness. One of the things that struck me was how drummer Henry Rogers managed to convey power without being overpowering but, at the same, time, seemed to be playing with inordinate ease and working with Moo (bass) to provide much more than just a rhythm backing to the set. The band’s progressive leanings became more than evident during the third song which started with an incredibly heavy introduction which was counterpointed by Kim’s lighter vocals. It was short, sharp and punchy and, if I’m honest, I have no idea whether it continued or segued into a new song after a solo keyboard section. Whatever happened, it was very effective and gave us a song (or songs) which was powerful enough to end the set of a lesser band. But by now, we were only half an hour in and the band had really seemed to warm up and Kim was owning the stage, wandering about and interacting with the musicians as well, as dancing and posing around the stage. More progressiveness followed with another heavy start leading into a sublimely light and stunning instrumental section, with Kim leaving the stage for a short while. Guitarist Adam Hodgson apparently brings the heavy influence to Touchstone, having previously being in hard-rock bands, but When Shadows Fall, one of the few songs to be introduced, reminded me a lot of Rush, especially in the guitar work. “This song is about people who aren’t very nice and what I’d like to say to them,” said Kim, with a kind of feisty innocence, peering out  from beneath her striking red fringe. The set ended with the epic The City Sleeps before the band returned for a two song encore, which included the previously mentioned quieter track before ending the evening with the anthemic rock of Look Me In The Eyes.

I’ve seen a lot of the prog-bands that have visited York in recent years, including most of the bigger femme-fronted ones, but I have to say that tonight has jumped straight into the top five of all gigs I have seen in our fair city. To put that into context, I see somewhere between thirty and forty gigs a year and have done for somewhere in the region of five years. That’s somewhere near one hundred and seventy-five gigs. Admittedly, touring bands are a bit more prevalent in my gig-going than local bands are at the moment but it is rare that a new discovery has the intensity and complexity of music that grabs me as much as Touchstone did tonight. I was expecting to like them, I wasn’t expecting to be totally blown away. I can only hope that the band return soon.