Predicting the quality of a band’s live performance based upon the music they’ve selected to play in the interim time has become almost second nature to me. I know all those wise things about not judging a book by its cover, but when the grand operatics of Michael Jackson’s ‘Will You Be There’ fill...
The last time I saw Simone Felice perform, he and his brothers were jumping around the stage at the Brudenell Social Club in Leeds – singing about chickens and turning a humble washing board into an instrument. This time, at the Pocklington Arts Centre in East Yorkshire, it’s an altogether more grown-up affair. People...
So festival season is finally upon us. Excited much? Thought so. OneFest is the rechristening of HoneyFest, and takes place on a Wiltshire site enveloped by green hills so smooth they looked like well-rolled icing. With flecks of rain puncturing the sky throughout the day, the ground was also left as sticky as a...
There is a stark contrast between the Noah and the Whale that first started as a young folk-pop ensemble with a love for elegant instrumentation (at the time probably one step too ambitious), and the solid and mature band of nowadays. It has taken a personal and tactical reassessment, years of sweat, a movie,...
Anæmic-white and hidden in the black waves of her dress, Anja Plaschg condenses down to a voice. A voice uncomfortable and unsettling for all its deep and rounded beauty. A voice, and behind that voice a vortex for all the darkest emotions you pretend you don’t have, and all the darkest emotions you only...
It’s time to elevate Ellen and the Escapades to the status of ‘FFS favourites’. The Leeds band, who soared into FFS’s consciousness by winning the Glastonbury Emerging Talent competition in 2010, are on tour with a debut album, All The Crooked Scenes, to promote and a lorry-load of Escapale – their own beer, brewed...
Theres something in Louise Hull’s voice that the world has been missing, since, well…. since forever really: and it’s something I think we should all be grateful to now have. We should get one thing straight beforehand though: alongside Louise, there exists one very marvellous band, one which definitely ranks a place in my “Top...
There’s nothing like a live performance to make it feel like you’ve missed something. Last time this reviewer saw Other Lives, they were on a small stage, in a sweatbox tent at a woodland festival. A few months down the line they’ve been on the road with Bon Iver, they’re currently taking a break...
Only an idiot goes to the Royal Albert Hall prepared for disappointment. It’s commonly known that mediocre performers wither and die within seconds of taking the stage, so booking anything other than overwhelming brilliance for this auspicious space is tantamount to murder. M. Ward didn’t die, not even a little bit. Dwarfed by the...
Here at the village-style Hoxton Hall the atmosphere is nothing if not dramatic. Six-strong band, Story Books, are spaced apart on a split-level stage, silhouetted against glaring, ‘Close Encounter’-style lighting. With this type of venue and visuals, bumble-gum pop was never going to be the order of the day, and Story Books are suitably...
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