Ellie Gowers live in Kenilworth
Review
This time of the year tends to generate "special" events & last evening at Kenilworth's United Reformed Church was no exception. In fact it epitomised the phenomenon.
I could justify my statement simply by stating that the headliner was Ellie Gowers but there is so much else that you can sit back & I'll list it for you.
I have repeatedly prophesised great popularity for Ellie & thankfully it's all coming to pass. Consequently as I foresaw, we don't see as much of her locally as we once did as she tours (by herself and with The Magpies) nationally & internationally.
Yesterday marked the final stop on a national solo tour & my heart was in my mouth until I arrived as the Glasgow leg had to be postponed due to apprehension over her voice: fortunately the rest worked. One might wonder if she prioritised her home crowd (and she said she knew 90% of the packed auditorium personally) over the music fans of Glasgow. In fact I did put that to her.
And there is much in what she does which reveals her continued involvement in our local grassroots scene. This gig was put together with long term collaborator Victoria of Kenilworth's Tree House Bookshop (look out for the programme of gigs they've put together in coming months). The real ear opener for me was support act Cat Mead. Ellie had made it clear that she wanted her partner for the gig to be a young locally based musician who could benefit from the showcase & in Cat she certainly found a real talent: I'll be looking forward to catching her live again & to reviewing the material she tells me that she is recording.
Leamington based (though from Australia), Cat is one of those musicians who ticks my boxes. A strong, original songwriter whose influences don't show heavily in her work: I couldn't spot any obvious ones. She sings of subjects of interest & maturity, shunning cliches and tropes. Most people would either avoid writing songs about their late Grandfather or risk falling into the big trap marked "mawkish". It is to Cat's credit that her song was narrative, fresh & moving without going near such a pitfall.
Her playing is delightfully unaffected with character & accessibility in addition to her obvious abilities. Much as I enjoyed her set, I was chuffed when Dan Sealey, so much more experienced & knowledgeable than me in such matters, praised her in response to a photo I posted. Not that I saw him there unfortunately but it was packed out with a waiting list for ticket returns.
How Ellie can keep her local radar so acutely tuned as to find Cat while roaming so far & wide is incredible. I look for truth in a musician (as I say probably too frequently here) and Cat has plenty of both in what she writes & how she performs it.
Ellie does feel that as much as she loves her home crowd, she does feel a little extra pressure. That must be true because she is a truthful person, but all I can say is that pressure can prompt that extra special level in the best artists.
I'm not sure how much she'll appreciate my starting with this, but from my earliest reviews I noted how in the great intensity of her performances, she tended to stomp her feet and dance around. This aspect had been dialled back in some of the recent gigs I'd seen but she was back at it (in her old trademark Doc Martens) in very fine form: I suggest the most dynamic I've ever seen with even some new moves she went instinctively into in the ecstasy of the playing. Not perhaps a comment on her musicianship, but to me key indicators not just of the profundity of the passion of her performance but on this occasion of feeling at home.
And in terms of her musicianship: her singing and guitar playing just get better & better yet she still serves the song entirely: I'm sure she could show off if she wanted but her integrity stops that.
She also pretty much improvised the setlist after a planned start: which again suggests a certain state of mind. Consequently we were treated to a surprising percentage of brand new songs: and guess what: they must be amongst her best ever. I'd also state how different they were to any you've heard from her before (a point I put to her afterwards and which she endorsed). But then that's Ellie isn't it? I honestly don't think any of her EPs or albums has sounded much like its predecessor.
She is a constantly progressing artist & to see her playing on the same bill as her great influence Richard Thompson which she has done twice this year and to see her scheduled for some really big events in 2026 alongside major folk legends (on the poster for the Indoor Festival of Folk at Cecil Sharp House, her name is the same size as that of Maddy Prior etc) shows that so many people are catching onto what we've known for quite a while.
With her huge repertoire (the new songs edged out so many favourites and she played several from 'You, The Passenger' which has just come out in extended & indeed vinyl form), covers have pretty much disappeared from her set. However the final moment was her (unplanned) a cappella version of "In The Bleak Midwinter" (which I have, I'm pleased to say heard her do years ago: presumably around this time of year) which defies my ability to adequately describe, delivered as it was in beautiful church with the space for her voice to soar up into.
Beforehand, I'd chatted to Cat about the space & its acoustics and how I was going to find it hard to avoid expressing how good a fit it was to the artist & her talents: well of course it's impossible to not say so. A sublime ending. But that was fitting considering all that had gone before.
The next stop for Ellie is a well earned break. I'm so looking forward to what's going to be a stunning new album.
