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Of one of the many balmy evenings we appear to be blessed with these days we trotted off to the Faversham on the Leeds University campus. A funky little intimate venue that incidentally serves a really decent selection of beers and ciders on tap, among other alcoholic and non-alcoholic delicacies!
First up was charming and understated Laura Groves who sang her Regina Spektor-esque songs with a captivating flute-y, bell-like voice that soared up Joni Mitchell’s heights and Björk’s unrefined edge. Her vocal melodies drifted beautifully on top of her sometimes lulling, sometimes inventive piano and guitar accompaniments. Her performance really sucked you into her world; had it not been for the sipping of international and local pints by the cool cosmopolitan kids, the way people were gathered around and sat on the floor meant it could have been storytime on the carpet at school.
Her vocal melodies drifted beautifully on top of her sometimes lulling, sometimes inventive piano and guitar accompaniments.
The next act was most definitely unexpected and all the more welcome, in my book, for being unusual. My only clue was the name ‘Peggy Sue & the Pirates’. Country with a twist, I thought, and I wasn’t far wrong. Peggy Sue and the Pirates are a wacky all-woman double act that does what I can only attempt to describe as acoustic indie/jazz/country/avant-pop... are you even allowed that many slashes?
Apparently so: think punk/indie aesthetic - stripped down musical texture with just their two voices in country-style close-harmony duets (naturally, with Brit-indie accents) - and sparse percussion with a bit of guitar and melodeon (basically a toy keyboard!) mixed in; home-made CDs complete with handwriting on the CD and what looks like home-made, photocopied CD cover art top off the image.
Nothing about what they do is particularly complex, but quirky harmonies, pseudo-soul vocals that have the lady-power panache of Amy Winehouse, ironically scatty characters, not to mention the customary ironic in-between-song banter makes it infectiously fun.
But the hands-down highlight was precisely what I had come for, but it’s hard for me to do justice to Johnny Flynn in words. Too much praise would sound sickly and would belie its soothing, intuitive timelessness. He’s not really trying to be anything, he just is; it seems too natural to rank along a scale of 'good' and 'bad'.
Essentially, Johnny Flynn’s music is somewhere between folk and blues, and everything from the lyrics to his technical ease with an absurdly wide variety of instruments, to his smooth rich voice make it wonderful. Every other song had me dancing and the ones in between engrossed me. OK, and maybe I fancy him a little bit too...
Johnny releases his Debut album A Larum on 26th May, and single Tickled Pink on 19th May. For more information check out Johnny Flynn’s Myspace.
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