The first band on tonight's billing, the Dawn Collective, featured three guys with two acoustic guitars, shakers, a single hand drum, programmable keyboard... and bells! They said they were missing their bass & cello player. Missing band members turns out to be a theme for the night.
They must be a fairly new band, the lead singer's voice can be heard shaking and sounding a bit scared in bits of between song banter. The songs were pretty laid back. They said this was to fit in better with tonight's vibe and they'll be playing a heavier set elsewhere around town soon. Reasonably all right tunes, singer has a nice enough voice, the hand drumming and various percussion quite spirited at times, final song in the set sounded especially interesting as the pace picked up and things got comparably more intense.
With their haircuts, beards, acoustic guitars and band name, questions were raised as to whether this was a Christian rock band or something. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Just saying...
Bluebottle Kiss is a band I had been meaning to catch for years, but for one stupid reason or another, somehow I never got around to it. So this will have to do for now. Bluebottle Kiss front man Jamie Hutchings on acoustic and electric guitars, his sister Sophie on a great big chunky keyboard. A loose and haphazard performance, Jamie and Sophie having trouble with wires, malfunctioning guitars foot pedals, keyboard foot pedals sliding away, microphone stands getting knocked over. At one point they were jokingly requesting for a roadie from the audience.
Normally I thought it was silly the idea that punters didn't want to hear all new songs, but tonight I was rather glad there were still a few recognisable Bluebottle Kiss tunes in there, sounding beautiful and strangely somewhat sophisticated even with just a guitar and keys. The keyboard work was notably classy, and Jamie wandering through the audience during the final song was a cheerful moment of silliness.
For an unadvertised gig in such a small venue organised, as far as I was aware, at rather short notice (or at least I didn't hear about it till rather late), the crowd turnout by now was quite healthy. Sister was even getting upset with overcrowding and inconsiderate people talking too loudly during sets. And I thought I hated people.
I've heard the voices of criticism, but personally, since the song "croupier", I have been really excited about the headlining band on the bill tonight, the Hampdens. The band wasn't here in full, apparently one of them wasn't even in the correct country. So they were playing as a three piece on acoustic guitar, keyboards and Susannah almost exclusively in charge of vocal duties. The set was full of new songs from an up coming EP. It's hard enough to hear lyrics at home with headphones on, let alone live at the venue with a bit too much chatter coming from the crowd at the back. Still, generally, overall it was sounding about as good as I had expected from them.
Found it funny when they stopped for the night there was no back stage area and they just stepped to the side while the crowd shouted for an encore and a band member just wandered through the crowd to the back of the room to ask the girl on merch whether she reckons they should play on. Quite a venue, this.