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| MUST REMEMBER TO TAKE OWN PHOTOS IN FUTURE |
This Friday held a night of singer/songwriters at the Louisiana. First up was Suzy Condrad who layered soundscapes out of loops with a cacophony of different instruments from her guitar to an autoharp. Her sound reminded me of PJ Harvey, Beach House and KT Tunstall. When she got into her stride the songs spoke for themselves, she's well worth looking up, but a mix of setting up issues and the time it takes to layer the songs mar the whole experience slightly, though her charm kept the crowd interested. She might do well to recruit a full band for performing live, even if this would remove the one-woman-band aspect of her performance, but I think her songs could hold up without any gimmicks.
Next was Jay Newton whose sound was a little more akin to Ben's than the other two supports. He played some good songs, the second of which I particularly liked, though most of which were quite downbeat, which I find is a very easy hole for the singer/songwriter to fall into. He shows promise and he seems to be able to write more upbeat or at least whimsical songs (Ben later played a song by his former band which was about H.P. Lovecraft's zombie creating re-animator Herbert West).
Penultimate act was Bristol's own Barry Dolan A.K.A. Oxygen Thief. Barry peddles a muscular, riff-based acoustic offering reminiscent of a stripped down Helmet, more owing to 90's alt-metal than Bob Dylan. He opened with an instrumental, ostensibly to warm up the headbanging muscles of both himself and veritable gig-barometer Big Jeff. He played tracks from his recent album, single "Mestle and Porter" and my personal highlight "Disasterplan", and also some fun covers of "Gold" by Spandau Ballet and "Party Hard" by Andrew WK. Barry always strikes up a rapport with the crowd and there was definitely drunken shouting along to his songs.
Ben made his way through the crowd to come onstage, as ever an unassuming figure in his suit jacket and t-shirt, his frank and modest brand of acoustic folk/rock with an ability to poke fun at himself drags his songs above those of a sea of miserable blokes with guitars. It began well but unfortunately a instrument failure meant he had to swap guitars before the second song, so he performed the rest of his set with Barry's kindly lent guitar. He played a solid set, spanning most of his releases along with his now iconic cover of The Postal Service's "The District Sleeps Alone". Particular highlights were the ironic "Singalong" (everyone did) and "Tell Avril Lavigne I Never Wanted To Be Her Stupid Boyfriend Anyway" which featured some ad-libbing from the titular female's "Sk8r Boi". He engaged with the crowd by telling some of the backstories of his songs he played and of the strange feeling of staring at a poster of yourself while urinating. He finished the night well but didn't quite manage to recreate the atmosphere of the last time he played the Louisiana, which was particularly electric. It was still a good performance overall however and Ben is going from strength to strength.
