1 post tagged “benjamin wetherill”
Nancy Wallace opened the evening -- filling in for Last of the Hard Men -- with a mix of two traditional songs, a few originals, and a cover of I Don't Believe in the Sun by The Magnetic Fields. Great to hear it sung with a Northern English accent. Anyone goes up in estimation by acknowledging the genius of The Magnetic Fields, but I was already enjoying Nancy's performance before that. Like Kate Rusby, only better.
Morvern Callar, playing with Larkin Grimm on tambourine and backing vocals, had a real charm to her performance, offset by oblique songs the meaning of which you could spend many entertaining hours trying to fathom. For a while I thought of her as a female Alasdair Roberts, but that's not right (not as much death in them).
I missed Benjamin Wetherill's performance at the Green Man Festival in August, but I overheard many people saying it was good, and the guy who shared my table at the Spitz, he'd seen it and was excited to see Wetherill again. He's from Yorkshire, but is far from the Arctic Monkeys or even Kate Rusby idea of Yorkshire-ness (the closest native of that county might be Jake Thackray, of whom there were hints in closing song, I Would Love To, but even that's quite wide of the mark). Tall and thin and dressed like an Administrative Officer from Jobcentre Plus (their head office is in Sheffield, so for all I know that could be his day job), Wetherill isn't a stereotypical folkie. His voice is thin and high, but hauntingly so. His guitar playing is delicate and fluid. So he needs an attentive audience, and he got one (I imagine the bar at Green Man must have been noisier). His ukulele-backed version of Irving Berlin's Isn't this a Lovely Day? would have won approval from Stephin Merritt too.
It was because Viking Moses was playing that I went to this gig in the first place. I got some of his tracks from eMusic when he was included on the Green Man bill, but then we had to leave before he was on. Then I missed his Pigeon Hole gig in September because I was ill. The tracks were so good, I had to see him, and he didn't disappoint. His voice is even more incredible live than on record. And his playing is both more mannered and more minimal. Being mannered and minimal can be a recipe for falling on your face or pretentiousness, but Viking Moses carries it off brilliantly, like a tightrope walker, so that every moment counts. Some great backing vocals, too, from performers on and off stage.
After that, Songs of the Green Pheasant was a bit of an anti-climax. Nothing wrong with the performance or the music -- I've been loving his song I am Daylights on Last.fm, and he played that -- but any long evening has a lull, and this was it. It was the only time that people started talking during the performance.
I hadn't heard of Larkin Grimm before, but apparently she's a friend of Viking Moses, and her voice is the female counterpart to his. Imagine the pitch of Joni Mitchell with the power of Ian Gillan. She also has the most erotic mouth since Natalie Merchant. Her songs are folk from mixed race folks (she's from Georgia): Appalachian, Scottish, African Spiritual and elemental chants that could be Native American Indian.
I'd heard David Thomas Broughton's name (I'm a big fan of David Thomas, of Pere Ubu, so DTB's name catches my eye) but never heard him and didn't know what to expect. His stage presence was the first hint: back to the audience, jabbing at his effects switches as he started some loops going. And the face, Buster-Keaton-like, completely expressionless. Next there was the voice, which seemed unconnected to the body from which it issued. Half Nashville-Skyline-era Dylan, and half Scott Walker. But none of the hints prepared me for what started about 15-20 minutes in. Describing the details would be difficult and probably ineffective, but many of us were, by turns, genuinely concerned, scared, amused, moved and transfixed for the next I-don't-know-how-long. For some of the time all we heard was a looped vocal, with improvised responses from the back of the venue from Viking Moses and Larkin Grimm (and others? it seemed like there was a loose choir of wailing and chanting around the room, and I guess anyone could have joined in). DTB himself walked into the audience and continued singing unamplified, pausing only to bang a glass on the table behind me. I can't remember seeing anything on (and off) a stage quite like this for the theatre of the performance. The closest comparisons I can think of would be Jarry's Ubu plays, or the best bits of Forced Entertainment.
I don't know how anyone could follow that. Just singing some songs would seem trite. So I'm afraid I didn't hang around to see Tom Brosseau close the evening. (I was very hungry by this time, and also keen to see Paul Collingwood score 200 on the cricket highlights.) But even having missed the supposed headliner, this was the best gig I've been too this year. Well done to the people at KNOM for putting it on.
