Here is the latest review from Lisa the Festival Blogger. Today she gives her thoughts on Bon Iver at City Recital Hall and All Tomorrow’s Parties.
Lately, a new generation of musicians are giving folk new meaning and an unexpected lease of life and lots more people are giving a folk - Bon Iver’s gig at City Recital Hall was testament to this fact.
T. S Elliot believed that ‘anxiety is the handmaiden to creativity’, when it comes to Bon Iver, it seems cabin fever works too. Created over a long winter in the wilderness in Wisconsin, he started excavating his broken heart and wrote For Emma, Forever Ago. The album has received blanket critical acclaim since for its dusky beauty and ethereal, dreamy self-examined intensity and the band have played to packed audiences around the world.
The gig I saw fell somewhere between gospel and folk with ghosts swirling around the cathedral like setting and there were lots of reasons to be excited - Bon Iver are evidently a band still enjoying playing together hugely. A band still humbled by their success. A band in no way styled but with a varied but also distinctive following in chequered lumber-jack shirts and - though anticipated – surprisingly no sightings of woollen headwear in 35-degree heat (though I did spot a number of heavily thatched beards on hot faces). When we were kids Mum used to empty the fruit bowl, stick it on our heads and cut around it - there was evidence of a little bit of that, too.
As they played a passage through their repertoire of established and new work, The Wolves became a perfect example of how, when you put your most tender parts on display, it is possible to create heart-rending beauty and be reminded that being in love is a precious, complicated state. Hearts swelled, we all sang along, and the effect was astounding.
Strumming away in a cabin just over a year ago, it must have been impossible for Bon Iver to imagine this kind of stratospheric ascent to notoriety. What it does to your head I can’t imagine, but he seemed to be in pretty good shape and loving every minute of it.
Which leads me to another example of charisma, the elusive quality almost impossible to define accurately. Nick Cave has it in spades. When he performs, purpose seems to occupy very fibre in his body and he moves as if he is threatened by the immediacy of death.
From the moment Cave and the Bad Seeds played their first power chord as the sun sunk at All Tomorrow’s Party, we fell under their spell. To my left, a clutch of 40 something couples wrapped in each other reminiscing. To my right, a gaggle twenty somethings gazing ahead like startled sheep between texting. We all knew the words.
Cave and Bad Seeds were my standout at ATP, but there were dozens more musical touchstones to choose from and the customary dramatics you’d expect at a music festival were on-stage rather than off: I’ve never seen so many people judiciously place their used beer cups in recycling beers. Diligently. Carefully. It was a model mini-society for a day, all of us queuing politely for the toilets with loo paper (!), lazing on the grass with hummus and crackers and – most importantly – there to appreciate various mental musical states from The Saints, Laughing Clowns, James “Blood” Ulmer, Robert Forster to The Necks and Harmonia and many more.
What gets some of these bands onto the stage to play their music after years of absence? I guess the ego is a nest of small distortions and lies about oneself, and getting on stage after all of these years is a passionate defence of this. It’s an opportunity to revisit memories, but also to moult and let a new set of ideas dawn - playing old stuff helps playing the new stuff, even just to flex different muscles.
A week experiencing the examined life has reminded me that there are many forests to fight your way through in this world and many artists break through by sheer force of character and it is worth heading to the hills familiarise yourself with the forests.
Lately, a new generation of musicians are giving folk new meaning and an unexpected lease of life and lots more people are giving a folk - Bon Iver’s gig at City Recital Hall was testament to this fact.
T. S Elliot believed that ‘anxiety is the handmaiden to creativity’, when it comes to Bon Iver, it seems cabin fever works too. Created over a long winter in the wilderness in Wisconsin, he started excavating his broken heart and wrote For Emma, Forever Ago. The album has received blanket critical acclaim since for its dusky beauty and ethereal, dreamy self-examined intensity and the band have played to packed audiences around the world.
The gig I saw fell somewhere between gospel and folk with ghosts swirling around the cathedral like setting and there were lots of reasons to be excited - Bon Iver are evidently a band still enjoying playing together hugely. A band still humbled by their success. A band in no way styled but with a varied but also distinctive following in chequered lumber-jack shirts and - though anticipated – surprisingly no sightings of woollen headwear in 35-degree heat (though I did spot a number of heavily thatched beards on hot faces). When we were kids Mum used to empty the fruit bowl, stick it on our heads and cut around it - there was evidence of a little bit of that, too.
As they played a passage through their repertoire of established and new work, The Wolves became a perfect example of how, when you put your most tender parts on display, it is possible to create heart-rending beauty and be reminded that being in love is a precious, complicated state. Hearts swelled, we all sang along, and the effect was astounding.
Strumming away in a cabin just over a year ago, it must have been impossible for Bon Iver to imagine this kind of stratospheric ascent to notoriety. What it does to your head I can’t imagine, but he seemed to be in pretty good shape and loving every minute of it.
Which leads me to another example of charisma, the elusive quality almost impossible to define accurately. Nick Cave has it in spades. When he performs, purpose seems to occupy very fibre in his body and he moves as if he is threatened by the immediacy of death.
From the moment Cave and the Bad Seeds played their first power chord as the sun sunk at All Tomorrow’s Party, we fell under their spell. To my left, a clutch of 40 something couples wrapped in each other reminiscing. To my right, a gaggle twenty somethings gazing ahead like startled sheep between texting. We all knew the words.
Cave and Bad Seeds were my standout at ATP, but there were dozens more musical touchstones to choose from and the customary dramatics you’d expect at a music festival were on-stage rather than off: I’ve never seen so many people judiciously place their used beer cups in recycling beers. Diligently. Carefully. It was a model mini-society for a day, all of us queuing politely for the toilets with loo paper (!), lazing on the grass with hummus and crackers and – most importantly – there to appreciate various mental musical states from The Saints, Laughing Clowns, James “Blood” Ulmer, Robert Forster to The Necks and Harmonia and many more.
What gets some of these bands onto the stage to play their music after years of absence? I guess the ego is a nest of small distortions and lies about oneself, and getting on stage after all of these years is a passionate defence of this. It’s an opportunity to revisit memories, but also to moult and let a new set of ideas dawn - playing old stuff helps playing the new stuff, even just to flex different muscles.
A week experiencing the examined life has reminded me that there are many forests to fight your way through in this world and many artists break through by sheer force of character and it is worth heading to the hills familiarise yourself with the forests.
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