DARREN HAYMAN + WITHERED HAND @ THE HOP, WAKEFIELD 2 December 2012

If it hadn’t been for the labyrinthine Wakefield one-way system I probably would have made the whole of the opening set from Jamie Lockhart of Mi Mye. As it was, for this my first visit to The Hop, I had to settle for just the second half of the set: alt-folk tunes played first on plucked fiddle then acoustic guitar, which were as quirkily appealing as his between song banter was winningly witty. Such convivial patter would become one of the hallmarks of this excellent evening.

Last time I caught Dan Willson aka Withered Hand (“[the name] it just is... you don’t think about these things at the time”) he was fighting off a bad cold which would eventually become a chest infection which would lead to the postponement of the remainder of the tour. Tonight he was hale and hearty, and after his recent visit to Finland, expounding the virtues of saunas “but you have them here right?” he asked hopefully staring through the stage lights to the packed crowd. As well as in fine health, he was also in good spirits: adding in anecdotes from his travels (USA and Australia as well as Finland) that included teenage ministry, ACDC and travel pussy (don’t ask apparently). But the songs, oh the songs. The quietly attentive audience, the intimate pub venue, and the aforementioned good health/spirits, allowed you to get caught up in mini bio-pic dramas of grey hair, study trips and second-hand suits. ‘Religious Songs’ and a re-started ‘New Dawn’ were particularly strong tonight in a 12 song set but stand-outs for me were new song ‘Long Over Desire’ and the final, impassioned ‘A Wonderful Life’ which added some raw, extra anguish to finish with.





Withered Hand Set List

Cornflake / Life Of Doubt / New Dawn / I Am Nothing / Providence / Love In The Time Of Ecstasy / Love And Desire / Religious Songs / No Cigarettes / Takeaway Food / Inbetweens / (It's A) Wonderful Lie

Darren Hayman has borrowed Jamie Lockhart’s guitar for his joint headlining solo set: “I’m telling you that not as an excuse... I think it’s good to try unfamiliar instruments. And you’ll probably get a better show for it”. After “song for any occasion” ‘I Taught You To Dance’ and ‘I Know I Fucked Up’ from “January Songs”, he then concentrated on a ‘condensed’ set of songs from his latest release "The Violence", a double album about the English Civil War-era Essex witch trials. If it sounds obtuse or heavy-going (“the last thing I want to do is lecture you”), nothing could be further from the truth. These songs were immediate, accessible and often deeply moving in their precise unpicking of the feelings of those caught up in the fear and violence of the times. Each song was delicately played out on that borrowed guitar with Hayman rocking from foot to foot often peering over his glasses to focus on the microphone given the intense brightness of the stage lights. And ‘Vinegar Tom’ is the most spell-binding love song to her dog from a one-legged, eighty year woman on the gallows you will ever hear. And I don’t mean that facetiously – it was truly spell-binding. There were only six out of twenty songs from ‘The Violence’ but as Hayman later said: keep them wanting more. Saying this would be a final song, he was offered time to do three, and as a compromise we got two: ‘Big Fish’ from “Pram Town” and the Hefner classic ‘The Sad Witch’.





I later overheard a debate in the Gents toilets as to whether he should have played the latter, suggesting it overshadowed or undercut his new material. I think I know what this person was getting at. But to me it was only one song. And the material from his solo career is strong enough to withstand any backward glances. It seems putting a concept to this album, the final of his Essex trilogy, has given the songwriter a set of rules, a restrictive framework, much like the discipline of “January Songs” in 2011 (write and record a song a day for every day of the first month of the year). And rising to such challenges, Darren Hayman is writing some of the best material of his substantial career, here beautifully delivered. I think he was right about that guitar.

Darren Hayman Set List

I Taught You How To Dance / I Know I Fucked Up / Impossible Times / Vinegar Tom / Henrietta Maria / I Will Hide Away / Rebecca West / Desire Lines / Out Of My League / Big Fish / The Sad Witch

WITHERED HAND @ KINGS ARMS, SALFORD 20 September 2012

I spent a good part of this evening trying to work out where the name Thugs On Wolves comes from. Or even if it makes sense. Nope I just couldn’t figure it out. However cryptic or nonsensical their nomenclature may be the Manchester four-piece are a delight on stage – twin vocal harmonies, twin acoustic guitars, acoustic bass plus keyboards and floor tom all mix into a dreamy Local Natives/Grizzly Bear vibe meets The Travelling Band wistfulness. They finished with two songs “only written yesterday” – the solo ‘Esmeralda’ and then ‘Jackdaw’ involving stop/start sections and complex vocal interplay. I’d already concluded Thugs On Wolves were accomplished but
to deliver ambitious new songs with such assurance... definitely worth tracking down.



“Call Me Dan”. Withered Hand aka Dan Willson is looking fit and trim tonight as well as being personable. But alas he is full of cold and by the second song his unruly hair has taken on a life of its own. Coughs and apologies aside though this is a damn impressive and powerful show in the intimate setting of the upstairs room of the Kings Arms. Opening with three solo songs including the “not yet recorded” ‘Life Of Doubt’, he is then joined by his three-piece band (“I must thank them now because I never do in the van”) for the remainder of a set which intersperses heartfelt renditions of classics (yes they are classics) from 2010’s "Good News" with new songs – either unrecorded or from the forthcoming vinyl EP ‘Inbetweens’.





Introducing the title track of that new EP, Dan Willson drifts off into a tale about the boring bits of life but it just fizzles out. If he appears distracted or talks askance into the microphone between songs, the ugly beauty of Withered Hands is they are so direct, personal and intense. And when he occasionally stares out from sweat-soaked hair during songs, his wide-eyed gaze is fierce and unswerving. The fast-paced ‘bad gene’ song ‘New Dawn’ may have held back a little tonight and there was no ‘Heart Heart’ to allow for a suffering throat to recover (“good job it’s not the beginning of the tour...” It is) but this was a delicious masterclass from Edinburgh’s anti-folk maestro and torch-bearer of the maudlin and downtrodden. How, how has Withered Hand world domination not yet been achieved? The tour continues – voice and health allowing – to Cardiff, London, Sheffield, Newcastle and Glasgow. Do not miss.





The Set List

Cornflake
No Cigarettes
Life Of Doubt
Inbetweens
New Dawn
Providence
Love In The Time Of Ecstasy
I Am Nothing
Gethsemane
Jubilee
Religious Songs

GREEN MAN FESTIVAL 2012 Day Two

There are always going to be clashes at festivals. But come on Green Man, Withered Hand and Sweet Baboo on different stages at the same time?! This was just too, too cruel. In the end I opted for the performer I’d seen least live: Withered Hand, here in full band set-up. Dan Willson said he had elaborate stage costumes planned but a late night got in the way and so they were “dressed like The Wurzels”. Self-deprecation can only be expected from the man who wrote ‘I Am Nothing’. But even with the sound in the Far Tent being far too echoey for my liking, this was a great, engaging set of pathos, humour, compassion and yes self-deprecation. Two new songs plus the “punk-rock number” ‘New Dawn’ left me very, very happy – and this even without ‘Religious Songs’ being in the set.







Withered Hand Set List:
Cornflake / I Am Nothing / Gethsemane / Providence / Jubilee / New Song (Walls?) / New Dawn / Love In The Time Of Ecstasy / No Cigarettes / Heart Heart

And for completeness, I hear the Sweet Baboo set was all-new material except for 'I’m A Dancer' and 'Twelve Carrots Of Love'.

The Perch Creek Family Jug Band had come to Green Man from the Edinburgh Fringe which figures – they added a touch of chirpy Australian showmanship to their stomping five-part harmony hillbilly music. The band – two brothers and two sisters plus boyfriend James - used banjo-ukulele, bowed saw, washboard, tap-dancing and, as the name says, jug to whip up the Walled Garden stage crowd. And then produce the longest queue I’ve seen to buy their album. You would have had to be the worst kind of curmudgeonly indie-snob not to enjoy their performance. And to be very clear, I did enjoy it.


Back to the same stage for RM Hubbert. The bearded and tattoo’d Glaswegian actually looks like a metaller but plays intricate flamenco flavoured acoustic instrumentals about his ex-wife, his dog and a dead friend “so I get to think about him each time I play it”. He sang the Aidan Moffat part from ‘Car Song’ from his recent Chemikal Underground album plus a traditional folk song taught to him by Alasdair Roberts but I found the wordless songs deeply hypnotic and moving (and his between song chat very, very funny).


Each time I see The Wave Pictures I state that repeated viewing of the band cannot dent the view of what a brilliant live band they are. Today was no exception although that cavernous Far Out tent sound wasn’t ideal and a set-list spat did occur. One of my party thought it overly favoured the new album to the detriment of older songs; I didn’t. Plus if you are as prolific and relentless in your touring as the Loughborough trio, I reckon you have earned the right to play what’s newest and freshest.



Again the curse of multi-stage festivals: I’d missed Dark Dark Dark and then only managed to catch two songs of the Bowerbirds (one was ‘In Our Talons’ though). I did however get to see Dark Dark Dark do a short acoustic set in the Rough Trade tent. “So this is piano-based music...” the Minneapolis band joked hemmed in between trestle tables, before playing four songs on just banjo, clarinet, accordion and snare drum. It left me kicking myself I’d missed both their Green Man set and their Salford gig earlier that week.



I caught a few songs from Portico Quartet’s Nick Mulvey in the sun in the Walled Garden before heading off for a drink. Now the act I had no intention of seeing at this festival, and the sore thumb in the three day event, was Van Morrison, the Saturday night ‘headliner’ but here getting on stage at 7.30pm. Which meant I did inadvertently catch the opening four numbers of his set whilst in the main stage beer tent queue. “How can he mangle his own song so badly?” was the reaction to ‘Brown Eyed Girl’. All dues to his career achievements and admittedly I was inside a crowded, canvas beer tent but it did sound like Van The Man was turning in lame jazz-lounge covers of his most well-known songs. What a bizarre booking for Green Man.

You’ve got to give everyone you’re not familiar with two songs’ worth of your attention. And Benjamin Francis Leftwich in the Far Out tent got that from me but he’s not having anymore. More familiar and interesting territory was Liverpudlian flute- wrangler Laura J Martin. Despite several live encounters this year, I still find her performances fresh and winning and tonight’s felt the most assured I’d seen her. Maybe she was upping her game for Stealing Sheep who acted as her backing band for two songs plus drummer Lucy also joining her earlier for ‘The Lesson’. Classy, classy stuff.







Laura J Martin Set List:
Fire Horse / The Lesson / It's Taking So Long / Tom / Red Flag / The Hangman Tree / At The Close Of The Day / Spy / Salamander

Much-heralded, passionate American troubadours with a good back-story are two-a-penny and most don’t live up to either the hype or the myth. Ex-carpenter Joe Pug on acoustic guitar and accompanied by Greg on electric guitar, managed to combine some Springsteen heart-on-the-sleeve moments with raspy Dylan-like story-telling as promised and neatly so for his first visit to Wales and appearance before Willy Mason on the Walled Garden stage. He was entertaining without being exceptional and warmly witty: “my father who is a teacher is nervous about calls from The Authorities when I play the next song. It’s called ‘I Do My Father's Drugs’...”. Although as one sage man observed: could he just turn the sincerity down by one?


It was two years ago at this festival that grown men wept during the afternoon set from The Tallest Man On Earth. Here he was back with a larger following (check the venues for his UK autumn tour) and a 2012 album which relies heavily on piano to headline the Far Out stage. However the approach to his performance was similar to his previous one here: using just a – large – bank of acoustic guitars and a chair as prop, the vest-wearing Swede swept to every corner of the stage in a semi-crouch whilst playing. Was my memory playing tricks or had he made it even a touch more theatrical? Teasing the crowd by pausing between familiar lines, throwing a plectrum dramatically over his shoulder to flutter beneath the vari-lights or letting the crowd sing the final line for ‘The Gardener’ before returning to repeat it himself. Either way the packed tent lapped it up. I didn’t see any tears this time but a lot of happy faces. A star performer.



Day two at Green Man done and I didn't even mention the mud and rain.

SOUNDS FROM THE OTHER CITY Salford 6 May 2012

In its seventh year, I finally made it to multi-venue one day festival Sounds From The Other City but nearly ended up spending all of it in just one one venue. The day started – and ended - at St Philip’s Church one of the twelve stages for the one-day festival, today programmed by Hey Manchester.

I’m not sure what factors led opening act Dancing Years to change their name from Joseph and David but factual accuracy may have been one of them. Performing as a six-piece - grand piano, violin, melodica, guitar, bass and drums - this felt like an ensemble of equals rather than a duo backed with hired help. As well as their mellow, gracefully arranged folk-pop, the Leeds band also gave us burger recommendations ("only £1.50. And with onions and cheese") and a final acoustic song performed in the church’s central aisle. A lovely start.





Seeing Withered Hand live has been a long time coming but it didn't disappoint. And as Dan Willson pointed out, church is the perfect venue for these religion-infused confessional songs of failure, heart-break and holy days peppered with off-hand between song reflections on communication between people, home-schooling and self-deprecation. A new EP is due later this year (“I’ll probably self-release it... look, I’m jaded already”) containing one of the two new songs he played. Like everything else he has recorded it will be essential, especially given the evidence on show this afternoon.









Withered Hand Set List: Cornflake / Providence / No Cigarettes / Gethsemane / Take Me To The Promised Land / Religious Songs / It's A Wonderful Lie / New Dawn/ Love In The Time Of Ecstasy

I stayed on in St Philip’s Church for Stuart McCallum’s instrumental jazz ruminations, mostly down-tempo numbers performed on guitar, double bass and drums except a final acoustic guitar-and-loops song ("here's a cheery one I wrote") to finish.

Restlessness finally pulled me out of St Philips Church to Islington Mill. It was a shame to miss Stranded Horse’s twenty-four string kora playing but it was time for something a bit noisier. Brighton’s Fear Of Men were certainly noisier than earlier fare but their dark reverb dream-pop also comes with waves of melody and sweetly sung vocals – as sugary soothing as it is fuzzily loud. Other than occasional swaying the band are largely impassive as they play – the exception being for their cover of The Chills ‘Pink Frost’ which became a spooky, almost hallucinogenic trip with the band twitching and convulsing along. Haunting and majestic.





Then back to St Philip’s for Laura J Martin. Now of all the day’s performers, Laura J Martin was the one who I was nervously interested to know how her delicate flute-and-mandolin-and-loops songs would work in the cavernous setting of the church. Brilliantly was the answer. She may have been a diminutive, solitary figure upon the now darkened parapet but the songs rang out, whether the frail, pin-drop quiet of ‘Tom’, or ‘The Lesson’ performed at the grand piano (“I like to keep it light: this is about family in-fighting mixed with cock-fighting”) or the furious flute-playing of ‘Spy’, tonight dedicated to Beastie Boy Adam Yauch.





Laura J Martin Set List: Fire Horse / The Lesson / It's Taking So Long / Spy / Tom / Black Caravan / Red Flag / Salamander

It was only a few weeks ago upon seeing this video that I realised how young Paul Thomas Saunders was. From the epic, cavernous sounds and emotions of his two EPs, I’d imagined someone with more years of bitter experience, remorse and pain tucked under their belt. Backed by a similarly youthful three-piece band, live these songs were just as sonically soaring and widescreen as their recorded versions. Another perfect pairing of music with setting. And imagine what Paul Thomas Saunders will sound like with a few more years of life’s ravages thrown at him.





I didn’t think Sweden’s Emil Svanängen aka Loney Dear could surprise me. I came expecting solo acoustic versions of the songs from his now seven album back catalogue. What I wasn’t expecting was the cleverly layered and hypnotic delivery of them. As well as acoustic guitar he was travelling with organ pedals, loop station and half a drum-kit. Seated he added subtle loops of guitar, voice, handclaps or individual pieces of percussion almost without you realising he had done so. It meant that songs were slowly and surely built up – often seven minutes plus in length – topped off with his emotive falsetto, just as moving as when wordless. Again the setting was perfect and the performance meticulous but deeply affecting. For final song ‘Resonance’ he tried to get the crowd to hum a specific refrain in f sharp – we failed but he really did not need any help from us or anyone else. A worthy headliner and a fine, fine finish to my first Sounds From The Other City.





I only caught seven out of eighty-three bands and made it – just – to two out of twelve venues but even that small sampling of Sounds From The Other City was fantastic value for money. In a week when a woeful BBC article wondered whether Manchester can get over its musical past (‘it can, it’s the media that can’t’ was the best retort I saw), here was another retort from a group of independent promoters looking forward not backwards, bringing local and international, new and emerging talent to the sunny city of Salford. Oh where many BBC departments are now based. A visit to their own backyard for SFTOC should put paid to such poor 'think' pieces in future.But as this article reveals Sounds From The Other City is 'up for review' by the organisers and will probably change its format to stay one step ahead. Definitely looking forwards not backwards.