Photosets: Night One, Night Two

The combined setlist from both nights (not in order of performance):

Belief
Bigger Than My Body
Clarity
Dreaming With A Broken Heart
Good Love Is On The Way
Gravity
I Don’t Need No Doctor (Ray Charles cover)
I Don’t Trust Myself (With Loving You)
I’m Gonna Find Another You
In Repair
No Such Thing
Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
Stop This Train
The Heart Of Life
Vultures
Waiting On The World To Change
Why Georgia
Your Body Is A Wonderland

I took a video of “Please Don’t Tell Her”, which I’ve uploaded to YouTube here.

The support band were Anathema, a Liverpool band who sound like a cross between A Perfect Circle and Vex Red, with a bit of doomy metal thrown in as well. Rather good.

Porcupine Tree were stunning. They played quite a lot from their new album “Deadwing” as well as a couple of tracks from “Up The Downstair” (which is going to be re-released in a few months) and a mixture of other old stuff. Highlights for me were “Blackest Eyes”, “Trains” and “Lazarus”. Definately worth checking out if you like your music intelligent and proggy, but with loads of melody to boot.

I feel I should say a bit about their guitarist, Guthrie Govan. I saw him perform solo at Music Live in Birmingham last year, and he was fairly stunning, but seeing him perform a full set tonight really showed off just how good he is. He is a master of all styles, can shred faster than just about anyone and has a perfect sense of rhythm. Vitally, every note he plays adds something to the song, he never resorts to mindless widdling and he always “says” something with what he is playing. Definately one to watch.

The venue is fantastic – a fairly small hall with the best acoustics I have ever heard for a gig – perfect reproduction of the natural sound of the guitars, crisp and balanced and with very little of the boomy reverb you normally experience in anything larger than the tiniest venue.

First up was Martin Carthy, who played a short set of folk tunes and a song from a film. His style is technical in its chord forms and picking patterns, but simple in its sound and melody, and perfectly suited to the music he plays, and his powerful and controlled voice is the definition of English folk music. Martin Taylor played next – an amazingly talented jazz player who can make his guitar sound like a full orchestra. He even made it sound like a steel band at one point. He did a stunning version of “Don’t Know Why” – the song that was made famous by Norah Jones.

Juan Martin was another change in mood and genre, playing very complex and technical flamenco music on his nylon-strung acoustic. His ability to play staggeringly fast flurries of notes but still pick out the melody of the tune impressed me the most about his performance. He was followed by Martin Simpson, who plays bluesy folk music and also threw in a Bob Dylan song. He started with a gorgeous slide guitar piece and played three or four others before inviting the rest of the players back to the stage.

The final part of the show consisted of all four Martins playing together. Initially it sounded a little crowded, but that was because I had been used to listening to solo players all night. I had been very interested to see how the different playing styles of the four guitarists could be made to work together. I quickly acclimatised to the sound and it became obvious that it really did work – rhythmic folk music with flamenco fills and jazz licks played over the top (or varying combinations of these) made a sound unlike anything else. These are four players who are used to performing solo and having to play the parts of a full band on their own. Put them together, and you have a band who all play the same instrument, but are capable of switching between the roles of the rhythm guitar player, lead guitar player, bassist and drummer at will, several times during each song. It’s an amazing sight to watch, and the players clearly enjoyed performing it as much as the audience enjoyed watching.

Overall, this was certainly the best guitar-centric gig I have seen, and I’m already looking forward to watching the Four Martins DVD I bought at the show!