Ellie Gowers at The Tin
Review
For ages, an Ellie Gowers gig at The Tin would have seemed a suitably prestigious gig for one of the area's foremost artists. Now however, her career is taking off in ways which while retaining the artist & the venue as a partnership, refigures the context to be a home area stop on a national tour whose last stops were Sheffield, Manchester & Cardiff & her next in London: promoting her brand new EP (please see my review) ‘You, The Passenger'. Indeed last night's concert (supported by Tarragon) was the first since the official release yesterday.
As I mentioned in my EP review, her star rising in this manner is something I've anticipated & hoped for over a period of years: she has also recently played in Canada & the Netherlands so has an international following now too.
When I saw her at Warwick Folk Festival in the summer, she was with her new trio (with Joss Mann-Hazell on bass guitar & double bass and Scarlett Churchill on drums) but on this occasion, she was in solo mode.
Although she played the entire new EP, the more acoustic setting (with a detour onto electric guitar for a few numbers mid-set) meant that she opened with three tracks from the more folky ‘Dwelling by the Weir' album and built the dynamics from there.
There were plenty of revelatory moments amongst the set: Ellie's songs have never stayed terribly static in arrangement or performance.
The brooding "The Sky is on Fire" was played on electric guitar (I'd never heard it that way live before) which gave it a real blues edge: she slowed it down & this accentuated the apocalyptic feel.
Five of the six songs off ‘You, The Passenger' were featured in Ellie's February acoustic showcase of new material at Warwick Arts Centre, so I recognised them in their stripped back forms as well as the fuller recorded ones. However she didn't play the title track at that concert and so the Joni Mitchell-esque version was an eye (well ear) opener.
The inclusion of "Eva" from the ‘Parting Breath' EP was one she slipped in for local fans and appreciated accordingly as was "The Stars Are Ours" which is now well established in her sets as the audience participation number.
The other big first for me was my seeing Ellie in what was technically a standing gig: the demand for tickets precluding seating in a venue easily filled by the attraction of seeing her (though some enterprising individuals resourced chairs from elsewhere for their ease). Given how danceable some of the songs now entering her repertoire are, maybe a sign of things to come?
I suppose that I tend to use expressions like "sublime" about Ellie Gowers gigs: well nothing changes there. Given the convergence of her writing & performing talents and then displaying them in a comparatively intimate & packed setting, curated superbly by Ian Whitehead before friends and family, what else could I describe it as?
Back in February, I noted that her trademark stamping/dancing on the new songs was absent (Ellie put this down to concentration) but you'll be pleased to note that familiarity with them has now reinstated her demonstration of passion in this way: the only concession to personal development being the substitution from the Dr Martens she used to wear onstage to stylish ankle boots: the effect was much the same though.
So there you have Ellie in a nutshell: passionate and sublime. Pretty compelling as a package isn't it?
