Liam Vincent and The Odd Foxes' album launch at HMV, Banbury
Review
What an historic day! I refer of course to the launch of ‘Fabric of a Flawed Society', the debut album by Liam Vincent and The Odd Foxes, which we reviewed here back in March.
I'm glad I caught them at HMV in Banbury: I thus avoided the rain from their previous evening's outdoors gig & also got to enjoy the best in-store performance I can remember. The space was ideal for sound quality, room to play, room for an audience & effective sightlines for us all: most of which stores, for obvious reasons, cannot usually guarantee. If you are looking for a good local place to play, especially to launch a new release, I'd certainly recommend it.
Contrarians that they are, the band, who might reasonably have been expected to concentrate on the album tracks, not only offered us a few others, they even opened with one.
As I say, the sound quality was excellent & enabled us to appreciate the quality of musicianship in the room. (Liam Vincent on guitar & vocals, Rebecca Mileham on violin & vocals, Gregg Cave , who plays electric guitar, bassist/vocalist Matt Berry and drummer Paul Disley) . That said, I was intrigued by the tone of the set. The album tracks reflect a lot of their frustrations with the world & can be pretty intense: in ways I applauded in my original review. The live renditions opened many of them up more & let the light into the arrangements: the sound came closer to "traditional folk" than the recorded equivalents do. However that does not mean that the heart was not left in the sentiments: the sense of anger was present in the lyrics & the delivery & became ever more evident as the set progressed: it did very much seem like they'd calibrated it to draw new audiences members (and there seemed by several casual customers there in addition to their fanbase and the band retained the attention of them all) and then reveal their full character.
I said in my earlier review (and the band seem to like it so much that the quote appears on their website) that "any band who can create this many original songs each of which stimulates the mind, the heart & the feet is thoroughly deserving of success.".
Well the songs certainly hit the heart & the mind and judging by the audience member next to me (just past her first birthday), stimulates dancing even among those still too young to appreciate the words.
Now it's finally out, I sincerely hope it does as well as it deserves. Right now, there are things which more than ever need saying & the record says quite a few of them.
