It`s been a difficult week as my Uncle (my Mom`s baby bother) who was 85 passed away and I headed to Ireland to the wake and funeral with storms causing disruption to road and rail over there. I returned physically intact but psychologically and emotionally, I`m still fairly out of sorts. I say this because The Bretheren were the perfect antidote to ease me back into what we refer to as normal life. This almost mellow folk quartet who comprise of Joey McClellan (lead vocals, guitar), Dave “Moose” Sherman (keys), Paulie DeVincenzo (bass) and Dave Scalia (drums) shared an enthralling and enchanting thirty odd minutes of songs that look like they`ll form part of their forthcoming debut album. They opened with `Meet Me In The Backroom` before offering up what was for me the fairly trippy `Waiting On The Line` before sharing probably their most forceful number `The Cheater` which seems to be a skewed love song or confessional song with the line ”I`m a fake, I`m a thief, i`m a cheater.”
The home stretch included the captivating and almost hypnotic `Turn Me On My Own` and `Who`s To Say` before closing with `I Got A Shine On You`. It might have been down to my impassioned state but I felt the last couple of numbers had a Fleetwood Mac `Rumours` era vibe about them and that in my book is no bad thing.
This was a stunning but all too brief introduction to a band whose individual resumés include having been members of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Midlake, Kevin Morby, Rufus Wainwright, Dawn Richard, White Rabbits, and The Veronicas. Their debut album drops in March and there`s hints of a UK tour in support of said release. If the opportunity arises, I suggest you go, they’re shows you won’t want to miss.
Jane Louise Weaver is an English singer, songwriter, and guitarist whose music would be classed as psychedelic folk. I`d never caught her and her band live as something always seemed to clash with her visits to Brum. Jane and her band arrive on stage to rapturous applause and open with the pulsing rhythmic `Quantify` before sharing a couple of cuts from her last album `Love in Constant Spectacle` with the quite dreamy `A Perfect Storm` and questioning title track with `The Revolution of Super Visions` sandwiched between both.
This hour long set included numbers such as the reflective `Heartlow` , ethereal `Modern Kosmology` which we are instructed was briefly in an episode of the spy thriller `Killing Eve` before closing with the fairly potent `The Architect` and electronic tinged `I Need A Connection`. It was a wonderfully captivating set and I thought there was a delightful vulnerability to the singers voice.
I last saw headliners Midlake in February 2010 at the Town Hall in Birmingham days after their third album `The Courage of Others` was released. The quintet arrive on stage and open with the vast almost prog folk composition `Bethel Woods`. We enjoy a couple of tracks from `The Courage of Others` album with the dreamlike `Children of the Grounds` and almost otherworldly `Acts of Man`.
The band released their sixth studio album `A Bridge To Far` last year which explored themes of hope, humility, and perseverance and offered up the rhythmic `The Ghouls`, meditative title track `A Bridge To Far` and the fragile `Days Gone By`. Other highlights of this eighty plus minute set were the vast `Antiphon`, `Roscoe` which was listed in Rolling Stone magazine’s 100 Greatest Songs of the 2000s, and `Feast of Carrion` before the fellas left us with the quite aptly titled `Head Home`. We didn`t and these Texans returned for a final number in `The Old And The Young` an absorbing number with an underlying drum cadence.
It`s been sixteen years since I last caught Midlake and they are as fresh today as they were back then. There`s a few shows left in the UK before the band head to Europe but it does seem that most are unsurprisingly already sold out but it`s worth checking anyway. Hopefully, it won`t be another decade and a half before I catch the band again.
