'Hot Music Live Presents' fundraiser for The Tin #12
Review
As I luxuriated in the incredible artistry of a whole, diverse range of musicians last evening at The Tin during our latest ‘Hot Music Live Presents' fundraiser for that special venue & charity, I had a moment of awful clarity: what a huge rod for my own reviewing back I have been making by organising lineups of this quality. I always start drafting these live reviews in my head during the sets but last night, enjoying Duke Keats, Reign The Girl Band, Shanade & Cat Mead, I was feeling out of my depth in terms of finding the right words. Please excuse the following deficit: I tried my best but you simply need to go and see artists of this calibre to appreciate them.
I'll start however by being helpful: the only proverbial fly in the equally proverbial ointment was that Leicester Row was closed to traffic: that affected me, it affected several of the artists and it affected many of the audience. If you are planning to visit The Tin, it looks like for the next couple of weeks you'll need to approach from the other direction to ensure you catch the start of gigs.
First up, was the increasingly high profile Cat. I must thank her for joining the lineup on the withdrawal of a scheduled artist but how the potential adversity was changed into glorious success! In just a few months, her profile has shot up like Artemis: both in terms of participation in live shows (catch her in the next week or so at the Priory Visitor Centre next Friday (17th April) as the guest of Izzie Derry on the Coventry leg of her national tour with Chloe Leigh, at the next Crypt Session (Friday 24th) under the Coventry Cathedral ruins alongside Tom Jennings and she is hosting a ‘Song & Story' original music showcase at Southbound Café/Bar in Leamington alongside Shanade, Jack Blackman & Daniel Barrie next Tuesday (14th April)) and with the quality of her releases: last night her next single "Society Anxiety" (out on Monday) was part of her setlist along with "Sound of the Wolf", her current acclaimed one.
Part of the DNA of these shows is to introduce audiences to artists they may not have previously encountered (I could only find one person other than myself who'd seen all four before last night) and Cat certainly won plenty of new fans: remember how high a percentage of crowds at The Tin are other musicians too.
Cat calls her music "dark indie folk music" which is as fair as any description can go (I certainly can't improve on it) but it transcends genre really: just truthful, intense songwriting approaching emotional subjects from a unique angle.
Shanade, as I'm about to describe, also defies categorisation. Though she has been round the local scene longer than Cat, not everyone present had had the pleasure of hearing her original tunes & those of us who had, had not necessarily heard a very fresh & recent collection which I hope gets recorded before too long. I hate hyperbole so when I say Shanade is in the form of her life writing this material, it's no exaggeration. As a long term big fan, I have loved so much of her work over the years but this is another gear.
Playing both guitar & keyboards (not at the same time), this was asset of great diversity. You could pick out her various musical loves, especially R&B and blues but Shanade is a mistress of the melting pot: nothing we heard fitted into one genre. For example if Janis Joplin had covered Nick Drake, you might get a flavour of one new song & another ‘Alice in Wonderland' one on piano was Shanade the Surrealist. This is creativity unbound.
I say that because she seemed to be having a fine old time up there: I wonder if the chance to play such personal material of her own rather than covers was emancipatory? At any event, I do hope she gets many more chances to play her own songs.
Reign The Girl Band also broke new ground at least in terms of breaking my own partial expectations of their music. So delicate & filigree it is, I really appreciated hearing it in the intimate environment of the Crypt, but like Banoffee at our last, they demonstrated how much potential they & it possess for delivering it in a range of settings, projecting it to suit the space and audience without the slightest detriment to nuance nor its general haunting nature: the crowd were in rapt awe apart from the thunderous applause between numbers.
Of course, given my previous praise for their vocal & instrumental virtuosity, this is predictable to a point, but it's still great to experience them win over yet more fans.
Which leads me into a nice story: they were approached by a couple who'd seen them at a previous gig & taken the opportunity to do so again: obviously this is a wonderful measure of success but even more so in that Amanda & Julian (because they deserve mention) had also taken the trouble to tell them what they thought of them directly. I suspect that we all (myself included) can at times keep positive thoughts to ourselves & maybe be a bit reticent to go up to musicians after a set & praise them, but I urge everyone to consider doing it: you can guess the effect on musician morale.
I also feel that momentum is an overlooked aspect of getting careers moving & so I'm delighted that Lily & Sian are playing gigs regularly: the word is spreading and I trust Amanda & Julian are just two of many getting hooked.
As for Duke Keats, we are again into totally unique territory. Viewed as "the most original band to come out of Coventry since The Specials", what other artist (and he displayed some of his visual art onstage as well as selling home created merch) manages to channel Ancient Egypt & Hollywood via a blend of music which has so many elements that you might say "everything" but I guess psychedelia, rock & funk are most obvious although the scent of experiment hangs over all. Naturally the quartet have the skills to go wherever these strange songs need to take them. A relatively simple example might be how "The Angels Are All That's Owed" (an acoustic song as released), popped up in full-on rock style.
There is so much fun going on that it's perhaps easy during the live manifestations of these songs to forget the high conceptualisation behind all of them: I think you have to really. Duke Keats is such strong stuff live that you simply can't process all the aspects of his fertile mind.
I just hope that the wider world gets at least a bit of his ambitious creativity: he is so hugely talented. At least Coventry gets him & loves him.
Presiding over all this quality & diversity was Ian Whitehead who curated the whole with his usual impeccable touch: the sound levels alone varied enormously between the four acts.
Our next gig will be on May 15th featuring Nuke The Whales, Louis Scheuer & The Big Strong Boys, Taylor-Louise and Blue Strawberries: tickets are available via:
https://events.humanitix.com/hot-music-live-nuke-the-whales-big-strong-boys-taylor-louise-blue-strawberries
See you there.
