Richard Hawley - Manchester Academy 26/9/12

I have a confession to make: I was in two minds about going to this gig. When this tour was first announced, I was in the midst of playing Richard's most recent and excellent album, "Standing At The Sky's Edge" (which I've already gushed over a bit here and will no doubt do so again) on constant repeat, and initially I thought this would be a must-see gig.

However, I read online reviews some people were moaning about the brevity of his sets. So at £20 a ticket I thought I'd wait it out and see how I feel about going closer to the date.

This turned out to be a brilliant move on my part: queueing for tickets at the door, a member of the door staff kindly offered me a returned ticket for FREE! Result! Although I did feel like I should stump up SOME cash, so I bought this lovely poster at the merch table to compensate.

Anyway, onto the actual gig. First, a quick word about the evening's support act, Lisa Hannigan. You might not recognise her name but you may recognise her voice: she's the lass that sang on much of Damien Rice's first two records.
In short, she was excellent. The Academy's brilliant acoustics really brought the best out of her ethereal vocals, and the bloke she had on backing vocals wasn't any slouch either. Her acoustic set was well received by the audience, and capped off by a fine cover of "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" in tribute to Levon Helm of The Band.

Having had our daily intake of Irish folk satisfied, the audience was ready for Richard and his band. Although apparently Richard wasn't quite ready for us. "Where the fuck did you lot come from?"

The "banter"... urgh sorry, I hate that word! Let's stick with "maverick Yorkshire charm" instead. There, I don't feel sick in my mouth typing that. Anyway, thanks to his maverick Yorkshire charm, Richard kept a firm rapport up with the audience all night. This is probably the reason some people think of his shows as being short: the night was full of so many great anecdotes and quips.

For instance, introducing tear-jerker "Don't Stare At The Sun", Richard explained "This is about taking one of my sons out to fly his kite. Pretty obtuse thing to write about, right? Thing was, I was off my fucking head on acid at the time."
Even better was the tale he had to tell about the rousing "Tonight The Streets Are Ours" being used in a film: apparently the director called him about it while Richard was on a two day bender with old friends ("It were a right laugh"). Hearing him talk about coming home after said bender was hilarious, his wife berating him to take the washing out ("You'd think a man of my standing would get more reverence.").

The audience, myself included were lapping it out of the palm of his hand, and virtually every song played received hearty cheers. In particular "Hotel Room" and "Open Up Your Door" went down a storm, and you could see the gratitude on his face for every ovation he and his band got.

I could spend nearly the entirety of this review going over the between song chatter, but this being a gig I probably should say a bit about the music!

Naturally the set was heavy on tracks from "...Sky's Edge", and it's the heavy guitar work of that album that really came to life. The guitars from singles "Leave Your Body Behind You" and "Down In The Woods" in particular stood out. Richard's band were excellent, in particular his guitarist (Richard's ringing endorsement: "Good guitar players in this country are really hard to come by. Well... who am I kidding, there's fucking loads!"). The lighting and the stage set up were also great and helped recreate the atmosphere of some of the albums more psychedelic, shoegaze-ish moments.

Songs from his previous albums were carefully chosen and dealt with in one of two ways. Either they came at gentler points in the set (the reflective "Remorse Code" lead in to the closing songs of the end of the main set, "Lady Solitude" was left until the start of the encore as a surprise of sorts), or like the two tracks from "Cole's Corner", "Hotel Room" and the sublime show-closer "The Ocean", they were re-purposed ever so slightly so that the guitars were more at the forefront of the songs.

For me personally the highlights were the songs that mixed the two: the way "Soldier On" begins as a longing, forlorn ballad before building to a dramatic wall of sound, and the majestic "Before" being the best examples.

By the end of the night the audience had resorted to pantomime to try to keep Richard from leaving;

Richard: "This'll be our last song."
Audience: NOOOOOO!
Richard (in a sing-song voice): "Yee-aa-ees."
Audience: NOOOOOO!
Richard (dead quick): "Yes"
Audience (dead quick): NO!

No way did we want him to leave when he was on such top form. But alas, as he pointed out "I only live 40 miles away, I'll be back!" I've no doubt he will be, and chances are I'll be there to watch. Who knows, maybe I'll pay to get in next time!

Anyway, cheers Richard. Next one's on me.



 Setlist:

1. Standing at the Sky's Edge
2. Don't Stare at the Sun
3. Hotel Room
4. Tonight the Streets Are Ours
5. Seek It
6. Soldier On
7. Leave Your Body Behind You
8. Before
9. Open Up Your Door
10. Remorse Code
11. Time Will Bring You Winter
12. Down in the Woods
    Encore:
13. Lady Solitude
14. The Ocean

Mercury Prize 2012: First Impressions

Well it was about time.

Today in a hotel or a conference centre or some other building in London, the list of nominees for the 2012 Barclaycard Mercury Prize were announced by none other than Lauren Laverne (who's been presenting coverage of the awards ever since someone at the BBC decided Jo Whiley was too old to gush about alternative music like an excited teenager).

Unlike some years where I've been left thinking "who are these people?", this year I actually know and in some cases like most of the artists nominated. So I thought I'd give my two cents on the field of nominees - their chances of winning and (if I've listened to them) whether their music is much cop. Odds to win are in brackets and are as quoted from The Guardian, I've no clue which bookmaker they've come from.

Roller Trio – Roller Trio (10/1): AKA "the token jazz entry" from my understanding. Long shots to say the least.

Field Music – Plumb (10/1): Fourth album by the Sunderland indie group. Ashamed to say I haven't heard it yet despite lots of critical acclaim, though I'm keen to hear it now. I hear they're very likable though. They also did this great remix of Maximo Park's "I Want You To Stay" yonks ago. Good luck to them.

Sam Lee – Ground of its Own (10/1): AKA "the folk entry no-one's heard of". There are a fair few folky/souly/acousticy singer-songwriters nominated this year though, so I'd be interested to hear this to see what makes it stand out.

Michael Kiwanuka - Home Again (8/1): Speaking of acousticy singer-songwriters, here's the BBC Sound of 2012. Love this guy's voice, and the first three tracks on this record ("Tell Me A Tale", "I'm Getting Ready" and "I'll Get Along") are damn near perfect. However I don't think the rest of the album matches the standard that opening trio sets. Don't see this winning but I won't complain if it does.

Lianne Le Havas - Is Your Love Big Enough? (8/1): Chuffed to see this album on the list too. Le Havas' experimentation on tracks like "Forget" and her eye for a cute turn of phrase with on the likes of "Age" and "No Room For Doubt" make her stand out from the acoustic-soul crowd. Again, not a likely winner but an enjoyable listen.

Ben Howard - Every Kingdom (8/1): I was a bit surprised to see this album get nominated. I've never Ben Howard's music but I got the impression that it was a bit Radio 2-ish with it's cushyness, although I'm sure you can accuse a few of the albums on this list of the same. Apparently he likes Bon Iver and John Martyn, so perhaps he's not as bad as I thought.


Jessie Ware - Devotion (7/1): This debut from South London's Ware would be a deserved winner. An eclectic mix of producers and a background that includes collaborating with Jack Penate and SBTRKT has lead to what The Fly called a "forward-thinking mish-mash of soul, pop and R&B". You might have heard her brilliant track "Wildest Moments" accompanying slow-motion images of Andy Murray actually expressing some emotion at the end of Wimbledon.

The Maccabees - Given To The Wild (7/1): Third and most adventurous album yet from London's The Maccabees. Along with nods to the post-punk styling of their early singles on the likes of "Pelican" and the excellent ending crescendo of "Feel To Follow", tracks such as "Child" and "We Grew Up At Midnight" exude a new-found blissfulness and maturity of songwriting (or as some lazy journalist hacks would put it, "they've gone all Coldplay") worthy of their nomination. 

Django Django - Django Django (5/1): These Glaswegian art-rockers make music that's very catchy and inventive, no doubt. But I'm still split on whether I really like them or find them a bit irritating. "Default", for instance, is an ace single with a cracking riff and intro, but something bothers me about the vocals - it's like they're trying to hard to sound like those effortlessly cool Brooklyn based bands. Still, this is the kind of album I can see the Mercury panel going for.

Alt-J - An Awesome Wave (5/1): Incorporating elements of trip-hop, electro and pop, this is a great album from a wonderfully creative band. As a mathematician they've forever won a place in my heart for writing "Tesselate" (mathematical double entendres for the win). Another album I can see the panel falling head over heels for.

Plan B - iLL Manors (4/1): I always find it a little sad that more often than not the only album amongst the nominees representing UK urban music is the most successful album of the genre that year, like how virtually all Dizzee Rascal's albums get nominated just because they couldn't be arsed to look a little harder for a less well-known album. I suppose since the whole Speech Debelle debacle a couple of years back it'll be a while before a true unkown on the UK urban scene gets a nomination. Yes, Plan B is great, but I hope in the near future we see someone like Sway turn up in the nominations.

Richard Hawley - Standing At The Sky's Edge (4/1): Probably my favourite album this year. Former Pulp guitarist Hawley could well have won the Mercury in 2006 with his sublime album "Cole's Corner" had fellow Sheffield-ers Arctic Monkeys not written the album of their generation with "Whatever People Say I Am...". A slight departure from his usual crooning and romanticism (although "Don't Stare At The Sun" and album closer "Before" excel in those areas), "Standing At The Sky's Edge" is much darker in tone and subject matter, with lashings of shoegaze-esque producing and heavy guitars. It's an absolute triumph and has a realistic shot at winning.

Personally, I'm torn between Alt-J and Richard Hawley to win. Plan B has to be considered a strong favourite too, and Jessie Ware could be the dark horse of this list too.

It's a pretty solid, if not very varied, field of nominees and I look forward to the winner being crowned.