Ash ‘n’ Earth

Saturday 14th April: I nearly didn’t make it to tonight’s gig. While making my way home from that afternoon’s Leeds match I had my first ever car breakdown. Luckily, apparently due to some sort of premonition, I had taken out breakdown cover just that morning. Therefore, thanks to a quick response from the RAC (who didn’t know that I was planning to go out) and a lift from Andy (who did), I managed to get there with minutes to spare. Sadly, in the rush I forgot to pick up anything that I could use to take meaningful notes, so this review is more or less from memory.

Tonight’s support came from Stolen Earth - who are now just a matter of weeks away from releasing their debut album – whose set has been described to me as their “rockier” one. Short though it may have been, it certainly had enough content to allow most, if not all, the band members their time in the spotlight. The near improvisational opening to I Live and the always excellent swansong of Perfect Wave allow Adam Dawson to show off his superb guitar playing, with the latter also giving Paul Teasdale a chance to pluck his stuff during its bass-heavy opening. Bitterness Fades allows the keyboards of John Sykes a more prominent role in proceedings and the light relief of the opening to Tuscany Sun showcases Heidi Widdop’s acoustic guitar. All through the set Barry Cassell’s drums provide a solid background to the songs. It was almost certainly due to the slightly different set that, even though we had only seen the band perform a few weeks ago, tonight sounded completely fresh and even managed to surprise, with the almost space-rock mid-section of Unnatural Disaster being something that I don’t remember hearing before. Unfortunately, despite the usual high standard of music, Heidi’s vocals were a little swamped tonight, which slightly took the edge of the overall performance. Hopefully, the sound will be better-handled at the album launch gig in June as we already know that, in the right circumstances, this band can sound superb.

Wishbone Ash are one of the older prog-rock bands that I have only just come across. I only own one album by them – the much-admired Argus – and have only listened to it a couple of times. Martin Turner was a founding member of the band, playing bass and providing vocals for it for the first decade, before leaving in 1980. In 2004 he formed Martin Turner’s Wishbone Ash as a touring band to perform classic material (although they have also re-recorded Argus as their sole studio album) and it is this incarnation that we are seeing tonight. Despite being in his mid-sixties, Turner is still energetic and, let’s say, slightly full of himself (in a good way) on stage and this was the most energetic performance of the “older” bands that we have seen recently. The set’s opening song, The King Will Come, was the only song that I at least vaguely recognised, despite two tracks from Argus (Warrior and Sometime World) being included. After the first song, Turner promised that the band – Dave Wagstaffe on drums and Ray Hatfield and Danny Wilson on guitars – would be playing us “some hippy music from the 70’s”, but we got so much more than that. In a varied and entertaining (although, I am informed, shorter than usual) set, we got a slice of old style folk (Lady Jane), something that could almost be described as jaunty (Sometime World), something much rockier (No Easy Road), a touch of the Blues (You Turned A Blind Eye) and even something more akin to melodic AOR (Living Proof). There was also a stunning instrumental section which, despite starting out in a more simple manner than most modern prog, managed to get more complex, louder and somehow bolder as it went along. This may be the closest I ever get to seeing the original Wishbone Ash, and I thoroughly enjoyed the performance. As, apparently, did the musicians, especially the front-line who spent much of the set flashing smiles and pulling faces at the audience and even resorted to a bit of showboating during the final song of the encore. Definitely worth checking out if you like classic 70’s rock.

  

Playing Musical Instruments

Saturday 31st March: Sometime over the last few days I saw Jessie J being interviewed about the BBC’s awful new “talent” show, The Voice. (Don’t get me started on it. In my opinion there is so much wrong with the format that I could fill a whole post talking about them.) One thing she said that made sense was that she didn’t like being called a “judge” because, to paraphrase, even though she might not like one of the acts, it wasn’t for her to criticise because it was likely that somebody else would like it. I hope that anything I write about bands I don’t like is seen the same way – as non-critical and certainly not as personal attacks on the act in question.

I mention this because I didn’t really like tonight’s opening act. There’s not a great deal of info about Joseph & David, despite them having both MySpace and Facebook pages, the latter with over 1,000 likes, perhaps proving that my opinion shouldn’t really be counted. A folk duo, if I had heard the vocals before seeing the performance I would have guessed (correctly) that the singer would have his eyes closed and face turned upwards. Some of the music was pleasantly relaxing to listen to but I’m afraid there wasn’t anything catchy enough to grab my interest. The addition of Simon Goff on violin and, later, James Hamilton on trumpet, added extra interest but while the final song of the set -  Rising Sun, performed off-stage in the middle of the crowd, sans keyboard and with Joseph providing just backing vocals – was listenable, I’m afraid the rest did little for me.

Hope&Social on the other hand are, as I’m sure my regular reader will have realised by now, firm favourites. The thing is, you never quite know what to expect from a Hope&Social gig and I certainly wasn’t expecting The Duchess to have been decked out with tables and candles. That’s usually reserved for folk or acoustic acts, not a band that have been described as a Yorkshire E-Street Band. I should have realised, really – with a new album of acoustic versions of songs from the previous three just released, of course this was going to be an acoustic tour. Now, for most bands, that would mean leaving most of the members behind and performing with a couple of guitars and, maybe, a shaker or two. But not for Hope&Social, ohhhh no. An acoustic tour from them involves leaving two of the brass section behind and filling whatever space is available in whatever transport they are using with practically every non-electric instrument they can find. And not only that…

“We’re even more unprepared for this than was usually are,” announced Simon Wainwright as the band took to the stage. “We did rehearse at a gig in London last night, though…” As they launched into Family Man it became obvious that something was afoot. Rich Huxley was playing a glockenspiel while Ed Waring and Simon Goff were standing behind what looked like a magician’s card table which was ultimately shown to contain a variety of hand bells, what looked like an old-style car hooter and one of those whistles that you play by pushing in a plunger. April saw Rich move to double bass (complete with tape marks to show where he should be putting his fingers), Gary Stewart playing guitar behind his drum kit and James back on violin. Both Rich and Gary were on ukuleles while Ed and James shared a keyboard for Pitching Far Too High while Cotton Wool saw Gary and Simon W on guitar and Rich on keys. You get the idea? Between every song, the band more or less played musical instruments (in the “chairs” sense), switching around and yet still not appearing to waste time and string things out. Just about the only song which received its normal treatment was Looking For Answers, with Simon performing it off-stage without the aid of a microphone, but even then the packed audience managed to change that one, singing the full chorus instead of the usual backing. There was, of course, the usual between song banter. During one song Rich wandered over to re-tune Simon’s guitar mid-intro, prompting Simon to declare that “some people would call that being a smart-arse.” “A smart-arse would have made sure it was tuned first,” retorted Rich, to the amusement of everybody. Simon also explained the band’s new rule, introduced the previous night, “anybody talking during a quiet song gets our sound engineer’s thumb up their bottom. It worked. We had a very quiet room and one very happy lady…”, which then led on to stories about his past “bottom problems”. You need to have a certain sense of humour to attend Hope&Social gigs.

The instrument free-for-all continued all through the set. Ed played the three or four notes that he knew on the euphonium during Rolling Sideways, which also included folk(ish) versions of You’re The One That I Want and House Of The Rising Son. Living A Lie was performed with just a variety of percussion while Red Red Rose saw a lady from the audience invited onto the stage to play one of the hand bells (while dressed as a leprechaun – I bet she didn’t see that coming…) The set ended with the band’s only “love” song You’re The Lighter Side Of Life. The inevitable encore started, unusually, with a cover of Yazoo’s Only You, complete with Flying Pickets backing vocals before Knotted Wood, the only new song from the latest album and then audience favourite You Can Call Me Al and A Darkness Now Is Coming. Finally, there was a second encore consisting of Eurospin, which eventually saw both Simons, Rich and Ed parading around the audience playing a number of brass instruments. Some of the notes may even have been correct.

As I said, you never quite know what you are going to get from Hope&Social. You can guarantee a few things, though – good music, laughs, and entertainment. Definitely one of the best value live bands you could see. The new album, Cotton Wool And Knotted Wood, is available along with the three excellent previous releases on the usual pay-what-you-want basis from the band’s website.

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.