Mountain Man, tonight’s support, are a female three piece from disparate corners of the States, all of which, we’re assured are (adopts barely audible voice) “really nice places, yeh”. From the moment they take the stage, approach the three mics and join hands, it is clear that I am not going to enjoy this. Technically, their a capella folk songs are very good, but they’re just a little too fey, a bit too folksy for my tastes, a fact which only becomes clearer by the fact that one of their songs features the line “two fair maidens”. Really?
The Low Anthem’s second album, last year’s magnificently titled ‘Oh My God. Charlie Darwin.’ is at times rather disjointed, moving from americana to blues to folk, live, that variety is still present but seems somehow more coherent. Part of what first attracted me to The Low Anthem was how atmospheric their recent work is, and seeing just how that was done, particularly the use of a singing saw, is fascinating. According to a press release, a total of 27 instruments were used on ‘OMGCD’, and many of them grace the rather small Pocklington Arts Centre stage, it becomes, at times, rather hard to keep track of what’s going on, instruments are swapped, and swapped again, the stage becomes a veritable log jam.
Before launching into ‘This Goddamn House’ from 2007’s ‘What the Crow Brings’, Ben Knox Miller makes a rather bizarre request, that someone phone their neighbours mobile, and put both on speaker phone, then give them to him (slightly convoluted way to steal someone’s phone?), he then whistled into the mic, moving the phones about, a strange, slightly ethereal cricket-like chirping/sound of the sea rings throughout the room, leaving my jaw firmly planted on the floor.
One thing I was not prepared for, considering who we were watching, was just how loud they were, ‘The Horizon is a Beltway’ and the Kerouac/Waits (two men whose works have clearly heavily influenced the band) penned ‘Home I’ll Never Be’ are amped up to buggery, pushing both Miller’s and multi instrumentalist Jocie Adams’ voices to their very limit. ‘To Ohio’ and ‘(Don’t) Tremble’ give them time to recover (and are even more beautiful than on record) before a barnstorming, and rather daft rendition of ‘There’s a Hole in My Bucket’. As we file out onto the mean streets of Pocklington, I had a realisation, The Low Anthem are one of the best live bands I have seen, and then I had another… They do this shit every night!
The only low point ; Everything Everthing playing York Stereo on the same day. Pfft
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