LIVE REVIEW: David Grubbs, Horse Loom @ Star & Shadow Cinema, Newcastle (17.03.25)

Image: David Grubbs by Steve Malley

This was the first time I’ve seen the cinema at the Star & Shadow used as a seated venue and it worked a treat for an evening of thoughtful guitar that invites immersion, not moshing. Steve Malley supported in his Horse Loom incarnation and was lovely all over again. There were exploratory, shimmering instrumentals, the a cappella miners’ hymn Colliery Spiritual/Ah Cud Hew, Lie Here – a song which perfectly captures the tentativeness but also the onward rush of love – and Know Your Name, a work-in-progress song about suicidal ideation drawing both on his years in the emergency services but also his deep reserves of empathy.

David Grubbs seems like a quiet, diffident kinda guy, not someone who has reimagined what guitars can do numerous times. The set was drawn primarily from his Whistle From Above album plus various projects with fellow travellers like Jules Reidy, and the tracks were grouped into long medleys, slipping from exploratory ragas into slashing riffs into something John Fahey could have produced into something soothing and sunset and so on. His custom Telecaster sounded clean and pure for the most part but lurched into dirty riffs a few times, with one track hitting a kind of desert boogie vein Earth would kill for. This was his first visit to Newcastle since a Bastro show 35 years ago and it was a triumph.