Hollow Parade at the Brayfield
They opened with the loudest thing they have, which is what a band does in a room this size before they have worked out that they do not need to.
By the fourth song they had worked it out.
They open with `Gantry`, which is the six-and-a-half-minute one, which is a strange choice for a Friday and turns out to be the right one. It buys them permission. By the time the first genuinely loud thing happens, eleven minutes in, the room has already agreed to pay attention, and a loud song arriving into attention is a different object from a loud song arriving into a room that is still getting drinks.
The new record is played almost complete, in sequence, which bands rarely do and which works here because the sequence is the best thing about it.
What does not work is the middle, and it does not work live for the same reason it does not work on the record — tracks four and five are connective tissue, and connective tissue in a four-hundred capacity room is where people go to the bar. You can watch it happen. About sixty people move during track four, and about forty of them come back.
The singer says almost nothing between songs. Two thank-yous and one sentence about the Lantern Rooms, which gets the loudest noise of the night and which she visibly did not expect to.
We played our fourth ever show in that room to about nine people. One of you was there. I know which one.
The support were Marguerite Tide, four months and five shows old, and they were better than a band five shows old has any business being — they have worked out that a big stage rewards standing still, which most bands take three years to learn. The guitar was in tune throughout, which regular readers will understand is a development.
Two weeks after the record and they already play it like it is older than it is, which is either confidence or relief and is probably both.
Theo Bramhall
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