Narc. Magazine Online
Reliably informed
Lee Fisher enjoys an evening of uplifting melodies and collective celebration
Image: Powtes by Lee Fisher
Some nights feel less like a gig and more like a coming together, a collective celebration. This was one of those nights and it felt like a genuine honour to be there. The Star & Shadow was rammed before 8pm, and judging by the rapturous reception relative newcomers Worms received, I’m guessing they’d worked hard on getting their mates out. It’s comparatively early days for Worms and they’re not quite the full deal yet, although there’s a lot of talent and a way with a breezy, Romantic, almost baroque strand of folk: hints of Shelleyan Orphan and perhaps too much Nick Drake – that gossamer, watercolour sound. I’d lose the slightly awkward poetry and Shakespeare readings but there’s a lot of promise.
It was my second time seeing the Jasmine Padgett Family Band and I fell in love with what they do all over again. Using just harmonium, banjo, fiddle and trumpet – and sometimes all their voices – Padgett and her band do something very special and original with often very traditional material. Folk grande dame Shirley Collins has a very strict notion of what a folk voice should be – simple, unadorned, in service of the song – and Padgett absolutely fulfils this ideal; her voice is gorgeous but entirely unshowy, and when heard in unison with the others, Sam Baxter in particular, it’s an instrument of great power and affect. The band move from the austere to the lush, the trad to the original, and aren’t afraid to embrace dissonance and drone. Wonderful stuff.
It was a brief set from Nev Clay (I think he handed half his time over to the not-so-surprising-but-very-special-guest) but it was a delight. We got his paean to the old Star & Shadow, and his recent and absolutely heartbreaking song The Rescuers. We also got something very strange and beautiful: years ago, Phil Tyler set the trad folk song Our Captain Cried (traditionally sung to the tune of To Be A Pilgrim) to a tune of his own, a melody that sounds like wives crying for their pressganged husbands. Having finally learned to play it, Clay mischievously adapted it to his own song Your Dad Sells Lighters (“…he fills them in the evening sitting in the kitchen.”), and then topped it off with one of his occasional heavy metal fuzz pedal endings. Killed it.
It’s one of the privileges of living where we do that from time to time, Richard Dawson will drop by for a secret guest slot and break all our hearts again. The only act to perform standing up, perhaps to remind us that he’s very much not a folkie (ahem), his three-song set was an absolute gem: Wooden Bag came with an extended, American Primitive intro and was performed with even more power than usual. The Question is fast becoming one of his most popular songs, an MR James tale mixing the spectral with the prosaic and a lush refrain. And We Picked Apples In A Graveyard Freshly Mowed is so beautiful I get choked up thinking about it.
By the time Powtes came onstage, the whole venue felt charged, welcoming and generally pretty pissed. And they were magnificent, of course. Destroying A Living – the debut album for which this was the launch – is one of the finest albums of the year, from Newcastle or anywhere, and live the bold arrangements, novel structures and experiments with drone and tone sound incredible. Gus Beamish’s voice is a strong and pure thing, relating tales of working class resistance and rural life with force but great beauty. And around him, the assorted strings, brass, pipes and bellows build up an incredible head of steam. In keeping with the collective feel of the evening, Powtes had invited people to bring their instruments to join in on Tithe Jig. Seeing upwards of twenty or more musicians (including most of the supports) playing their hearts out to such an uplifting melody will stay with me for a long time. Like I said, it all felt like an honour.
