Two Gigs
At time of writing, I'm uncharacteristically listening to a lot of Radio 3. And feeling a bit impostery, to be honest. When I was about 10, I pretty much exclusively listened to classical stuff - or at least the big, melodic bombastic orchestral guys like Holst and Mussorgsky and Copland. But even though I kept playing classical violin until I was at university, my interest in listening to the stuff faded away, replaced with rock and folk. These days, if I listen to classical music, it tends to be composers who are adjacent to the alt-rock stuff I'm most comfortable with (Philip Glass, Michael Nyman, Max Richter etc etc). Radio 3 feels like foreign territory.
Often extremely enjoyable foreign territory. I've found stuff I liked (L'Arpeggiata, who do baroque stuff with tasteful Latin/Jazzy grooves, or Respighi's The Fountains of Rome and The Pines of Rome which repeatedly blast you backwards with big unsubtle explosions of grandeur). And a lot of the time, it gives a pleasant or interesting bed of sound when working or driving.
But that's where it gets impostery: "Pleasant Bed of Sound" feels like an ignorant, even disrespectful way of talking about The Great Pillars of Western Art, whereas I feel confident treating music that way when I'm listening to Radio 6, or a Spotify alt-rock playlist. And when I say I don't enjoy Neil Young, or The Beach Boys, or Metallica, I feel like I understand their respective traditions well enough that disliking them says something specific about my taste. When I say that I don't enjoy Stravinsky, it feels like it's because I don't know enough to understand what he's doing.
Which is odd. It's all just music, after all.
In any case, I saw two gigs recently. Let's talk about them!
Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit
Jason Isbell plays country music. He's a singer-songwriter. And like a lot of properly great singer-songwriters, he's got three things going for him. 1) An absolute command of lyrics, 2) An absolute command of melody, 3) a sense of a specific personality, articulated consistently through the music, which just makes listening to him feel like being in good company.
The first two are sort of self-evident (Listen to "24 Frames", listen to "Something to Love"). The third maybe needs unpacking. The person we see in the music is clear: he's a family man, he's a recovering alcoholic who has been sober since the early 2010s, he is from Alabama, he is earnest, reflective, principled. There's a sense of thoughtfulness and hard-won decency throughout his work - listening to it feels like engaging with someone admirable.
Given that the albums feel so much like the work of one mind, one personality, it was surprising this felt like a band gig rather than a singer-songwriter gig. It was full of space for solos, improvisations, leadership passed around the stage. The sound was crystal-clear and the precise workings of the guitars and keyboards were as important as the voice. Some gigs are like an audience with a storyteller, or a late-night conversation. This was about the sound and feeling of rock-and-roll, all that communal, team-crafted crunch.
Which is not to say it was always a party. Sometimes it was - "It Gets Easier" and "Hope The High Road" were both full of punch-the-air excitement - although lyrically, neither are about simple victories, they're both bloody-minded songs about persistence and adversity. But Isbell has written three of the saddest songs I've ever heard ("Elephant", "Speed Trap Town", "If We Were Vampires"). They're raw, unflinching confrontations with death. They're beautiful, they were beautifully performed, "If We Were Vampires" made me cry a bit, but it was bracing to get all three. You also had the subtle beauty of "Only Children", delicate guitars weaving in and out from each other.
The gig ended, though, with roaring: "Decoration Day" was a canvas on which to paint vast guitar solos, grand detonations against the night. Appropriate explosions at the finish.
Bellowhead
Bellowhead are probably the band that have changed my life the most. They're a big part of the reason I play folk music. And if you're my age and play trad English music, you are in their shadow: in some sense you're always either inspired by them or pulling against them, often both. The various projects of their members provide a map of 21st century English folk - they create and define the repertoire we're all working in.
And they do this while putting on a Massive Party.
I think this was my fifth Bellowhead gig. They're still as good a live act as I've ever seen (the only two in the same league: Springsteen, and R.E.M.). A huge wall of sound and power, wild stage leaping, charisma in every corner, the audience pulled into a frenzy. Technically this was a seated gig, but there weren't many people seated in the back third.
And all this thunder is underwritten by a backbone of sophistication. At any moment you can look through the power, and zoom in on the subtleties of a melodeon line, or an unexpected rhythm, or someone providing a harmony you hadn't noticed before. If you look at the rehearsal videos of their percussionist on Twitter, you can see a denisty and complexity to the playing that just comes across as a rollercoaster on stage.
This tour was under the shadow of a bereavement: Paul Sartin, a founding member of the band, had died earlier this year. Around halfway through the gig there was a moving, funereal tribute: Sartin's voice is heard, singing acapella, filling the space. The musicians onstage fade in an out, with harmonies and quiet accompaniments, never overpowering the recording. It's a ritual act of respect. And after that song is finished, Sartin's name is evoked a few times again, this time in joy: we're told when he arranged a song they're playing, or when they're performing a song he liked to sing in the pub.
An extraordinary gig, then. If there's any criticism to be made of Bellowhead at the moment, it's that this incarnation of the band isn't going to surprise anyone who's seen them before. They're a well-oiled professional machine, providing joy in the exact same way they have for a couple of decades now. But providing joy at this standard is hard and rare. And their members are still stretching themselves and innovating in dozens of other projects outside of Bellowhead.
I assume I'll keep seeing Bellowhead as long as they keep touring. I don't think there are many acts that are as absolute a guarantee of a good time. Long may they continue.
I said I would try to write one of these every week! Well, as you can see, it's two weeks later, so that hasn't quite worked. Maybe I'll try to make the next one shorter and faster.
As ever, I am grateful and touched that you want to subscribe to these. Thank you. If you like it, please do tell people about it. And if you particularly like any specific email I'd be really grateful if you shared the link on twitter or facebook or similar. And you can always reply to these emails, and let me know what you think, or suggest future topics for newsletters.