Bear's Den - Tuesday 12th February 2013 - The Ruby Lounge

Agape - a.ga.pe - Greek noun, one of the "four loves", a sacrificial love felt for one's children, spouse, siblings. A love that is divine and unconditional.

Bear's Den are Andrew Davie, Kev Jones and Joey Haynes: I've written about this band a few times here before, I've listened to "Pompeii" lots over the last few months and can't quite remember where I found it. With the upcoming release of their EP "Agape", I've started to listen to them more and more and went to see them play at The Ruby Lounge in Manchester this week.

Support came in the form of Honey Feet, a band I think are Northern Irish made up of the odd and surprisingly perfect combination of a vocalist/flautist, guitarist and saxophone player. Their music they admitted was "miserable" except it's great, seeming to combine Gaelic folk with jazz and choral blues, elements of joy in there, despite finishing with a song about cannibalism. Joe Banfi followed, a beautiful guitarist similar in style to Laura Marling and Ben Howard, his voice is so strange and the addition of slight reverb effects on the microphone gave it an almost eerie level of distance and grace. He played a quieter, softer cover of Nirvana's "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?", and original songs, including lovely "Olive Tree" and "Nomads", from a recent EP of his, which is dark and ghostly as it is gorgeous.

Bear's Den took to the stage, opening with "Agape", the lively and reminiscent title track from their newest EP, full of life and heart. Like so many folk-rock bands, blossoming out of this fast developing genre,  Bear's Den are a whole when they play; they're just perfectly in time and in sync, make a lot of eye contact, and just seem to know these songs and each other in and out. It's something you notice in Noah and the Whale, in Johnny Flynn and the Sussex Wit, and the Mumfords of course, that sense of connection through music.

They are, most of the time, a rhythm guitarist who is also on vocals. Their drummer is also their bass player, sometimes the two at once, and their lead guitarist switches between this and banjo, all of this making extraordinary amounts of noise and atmosphere for three people.

"Isaac", from their new EP, is completely beautiful, a message of devotion. "A father's love must be earned" - it's full of uncertainty as much as it is full of love. Their music is foot-stomping, heart-warming folk, their lyrics rich and riddled with tales. "A Year Ago Today" talks of standing outside a courtroom beside someone, a song about family and pride.

"Pompeii" is about the loss of a family member, talking of both the dark and the light sides of grief. The band seemed genuinely surprised when they announced they were about to play "Pompeii", and the crowd cheered, saying it was so strange to them that people know these songs. Some songs are just meant to be heard and played in a crowd, however big or small as long as people are all feeling it at once, and it was incredible to be a part of that in this little bar, everyone singing like a mantra;

"Don't cry, hold your head up high,
She would want you to, she would want you to."

Bear's Den's EP "Agape" is released this March. There's still dates left for them to play on their UK tour and they're headed to the States to support Mumford and Sons this summer, more information avaliable from their Twitter.

Mumford and Sons - Friday 7th December 2012 - LG Arena, Birmingham

Mumford and Sons are considered one of the bands that the increasingly popular genre that so frequently gets referred to now as “nu-folk” stemmed from. They are Ben Lovett, Marcus Mumford, “Country” Winston and Ted Dwane and long with the likes of Noah and the Whale, Laura Marling and Johnny Flynn,  the four of them met amongst a circle of musicians in a London folk club that became a community and wrote together, played in each other's bands et cetera. Their name is chosen for its similarity to that of an old English family business.

They didn't stay small. Now, they win Grammys and fill arenas and perform in the White House.

I was late to the party with Mumford and Sons, buying "Sigh No More" in late 2010 but I fell in love with their music so easily, and consider them one of my favourite bands. Their first album is rousing folk-rock, revolutionising the banjo and the mandolin, glittering with lyrics that frequently reference Shakespearian literature and the bible. "Babel", their second release from September this year, follows the winning formula.

The LG Arena that night was so profoundly their's, decorated with trademark strings of fairy lights hanging over the crowd and the Gentlemen of the Road logo across the curtain, the four red flags that symbolise their new album hanging gratuitously above the stage.

Support kicked off with the unenthusiastic, witty and completely hilarious Piff the Magic Dragon, who entertained the crowd with magic tricks. He was followed by Post War Years, a band that brought together rock and electronica in a set that had the crowd dancing. The third of their opening bands were Dawes, a band from Los Angeles that carry reminders of both Dire Straits and Ryan Adams in their music, but you can also hear Mumford and Sons in them. After this, Piff the Magic Dragon came on for a second set, bringing with him this time a chihuahua.

At nine pm, the lights went down, to huge amounts of applause, and those first piercing and sharp chords of "Babel" shone out through the arena. And the curtains came down.

The crowd were open-hearted and loud, singing along with every word of "Babel". Seeing Marcus, Winston, Ben and Ted for those first few minutes was completely surreal, it never feels quite real when I see a band play for the first time, especially when their voices and their sound has been along with me every day for years before. They brought so much life and energy to the stage from those first few moments.

"I Will Wait" is all jangling guitar rhythms and rousing choruses; it had the whole crowd dancing, and there is something special about crying out "Raise my hands, paint my spirit gold!" aloud, along with a giant arena full of other humans, doing and feeling the same. For "Winter Winds", a song from the first album, Marcus took on an electric mandolin, and every moment of it reminds me of Christmas. "Below My Feet" is thoughtful and soft, with more of a focus on keyboard than most other songs, during which they sing together in perfect harmony. Those moments in which all of the instruments stop, leaving the room alone with the four guys and their voices, were some of the most beautiful of the night.

This was followed with "White Blank Page", beautifully bursting with passion and anger. Tonight, they said, was the third time only they had played "Hopeless Wanderer" to an audience but like everything else it was flawless, rousing feet to dance and warming hearts' cockles with contagious melodies and beautiful words as hands slammed violently and impossibly quickly across strings.

"So when your hope's on fire
But you know your desire
Don't hold a glass over the flame, don't let your heart grow cold,
I will call you by name, I will share your road."

This intense spell of energy was followed by "Timshel" - the song entitled after an old-English word meaning "thou mayest", a moment of quiet and beauty. It's a song that always reminds me of Christmas. "As brothers we will stand and we'll hold your hand." 

"Little Lion Man" was That One everyone knew the words to, the whole crowd chanting the chorus from the bottoms of their lungs. "Thistle and Weeds", strong and stormy and loud, blew over into "Ghosts That We Knew", the most tender of melodies, a comfort blanket of a song, sounding so fragile though it never could break.

"Lover of the Light" was one of the most beautiful moments of the night for me, and there's a particular banjo line in this one - you'll probably know which I mean - that tangles right through my heartstrings every time. During this song Marcus went over to drums.

Support band Dawes came back on to join them for "Awake My Soul", as did Piff the Magic Dragon who helpfully fed Winston Doritos. That song sounds like the walk you take that makes you think differently, or just like breathing in fresh air. "Roll Away Your Stone" is playful and loud and full of life, has your feet stomping. "Whispers in the Dark" is romantic and swings between the loud and the quiet.

I was so pleased that they played "Dust Bowl Dance", a song different to all of their others, it is a ballad in the traditional sense that it tells a story. It is dark, growing in pace, lyrics that talk of betrayal and, most of all, of revenge, complete proof that folk music does indeed rock out a lot.

They left, and then, for encores, emerged on a smaller stage right in the middle of the crowd, just the four of them crowded around one acoustic guitar. They sang "Where Are You Now?" in gorgeous four part harmony, the tale of someone lost without a trace. This moment of peace and quiet continued with "Reminder", before the band headed back to the main stage and played "The Cave", a song that's become an absolute anthem. It was a moment of complete communion, and assured me however big this band gets, however big venues they are playing, it does not mean there will be distance. Where I was that night, squashed up in the front row, the room felt tiny and everyone close by.

They brought Dawes back on for the last song, a cover of the Beatles' "With A Little Help from My Friends" which was both brilliant and hilarious, Ted and Winston leaning towards the mic in unison to sing backing vocals and Marcus and Dawes' vocalist both singing lead.

Mumford and Sons had as much heart and enthusiasm in the huge LG Arena than they would have playing in a tiny venue where everyone was quiet or a pub where nobody would listen, I'm sure, because you can tell so easily that they just love doing this. They breathe life into their music, they stick with their roots and explore at the same time, and I don't think this is going to change, however "mainstream" or not they are considered. The idea of "Mumford and Sons" as an old English family business completely defines and influences their music, carrying all the values of something shared through love, pride and community. 

***
A Really Slushy Note:
This took two days to make myself write because I have these childish feelings of not wanting it to be over, wanting to cling on in every way possible and blogging about a concert is always sort of like the last step in the process for me. I've loved Mumford and Sons for two years and during this time I have had a lot of almosts in terms of getting to their shows and then being disappointed. When I was fourteen one of my friends went and my mum didn't let me, because it was on a week day, it was too far away for me to go on my own, various other things that didn't seem sensible at the time and to be honest still don't really. Then earlier this year they were in England when I was in Hamburg, which was really frustrating. So it didn't seem real when we finally got tickets in October. It was in a lot of ways nothing like I thought. I wasn't there with the person I thought I'd be going with, and they played songs I didn't think they would, and vice versa didn't play songs I would sure would be on the set list. It didn't matter, it was really perfect.
I want there to be a neat way to conclude this but there isn't. I suppose what I'm saying is, that band you are waiting to see that you listen to every day, it is so worth it to keep trying. Even if you live on a tiny goat farm somewhere and you need to travel, or it means you have to cut back on spending on other things for a while.
It is worth it. Honest.

I hope you're all well. I'll be back really soon.
Sincerely, with post-gig depression and a heavy heart,

Lizzie xxxxxxxxxx

Ben Howard - Monday 12th November 2012 - O2 Apollo, Manchester

Ben Howard is from Devon, a singer-songwriter who, along with Mumford and Sons, Pete Roe, and such, is lumped in a genre that gets called "nu-folk". He's also compared to John Martyn increasingly often. His album "Every Kingdom" was released last year, and received a Mercury prize nomination in 2012.

Manchester Apollo filled up quick last night with an odd mix come to see him - an audience dominated by girls, but there were a lot of couples there too, and guys in their early twenties and thirties. The old, converted cinema welcomed support act Willy Mason - a country singer, I suppose, he played alone, sometimes with a second guitarist and sang of pick-ups trucks and suicide. He's really great, and I hope he's going do well, especially with Jake Bugg making this kind of thing cool again.

There was the wait, that time of achy backs and wondering if you should have bought a drink whilst the bar was still accessible.

And then the lights went out.

Ben Howard opened with the soft plucking of an electric guitar in the dark, whispers of cymbals. He opened with "Burgh Island", one of the darker, quieter ones from his new EP and it was just stunning. "Diamonds" followed, in which the stage lit up slowly, the entire audience singing along with the chorus.

His band was a beautifully disarranged affair, the drummer played bass at times, guitarist would switch to keyboard and then there was India Bourne, who contributed harmonies, played cello, drums, and bass, moving around throughout the show. It was perfect.

One of the best things about the setlist that night was that one mood would be carried through several songs. Whilst there's still a mixture, two or three lively ones that bring the crowd to dancing and screaming out the lyrics will be followed by a quieter, more solemn moment. His music is sort of a constant stream - several songs drift gracefully into the next, as they do on the album.

Highlights included "Old Pine", a really beautiful moment in which the crowd sang along throwing out full heart and soul, and the incredible energy of "The Wolves". "Esmerelda" is from his new release, "The Burgh Island EP", and brought to the stage it was haunting. With sound and vision, he cast the ocean and the rocks across the venue, and it was so very stunning. "Keep Your Head Up", also, was a moment of such unity for everyone in the room.

Ben finished with "The Fear", one of his biggest singles, and that was a really amazing moment, everyone along the front rows singing and dancing and proving that folk music can and does rock out a lot.

He and the band left the stage. The lights stayed out. The crowd cheered and cheered for an encore.

They returned, to an overwhelming raise in applause and in happiness. He played "Black Flies", one of the more sorrowful tracks from "Every Kingdom", the sort of song you find new things in each time you listen to. The main guitar riff just runs right through your chest, pulses through your veins when it's that loud and atmouspheric around you.

Ben followed this with "Promise", the last song of the night. I love this one because it's not a pop song in the sense that it lacks structure, it lacks choruses and verses, it's just a beautiful train of thoughts set to melody.

"Meet me there,

Bundles of flowers, we'll wait through the hours of cold."

In his lyrics, Ben Howard brings nature alive in a way that I haven't heard anyone else. His music is the woods, and the deepest parts of the sea. Through his show, visuals on a screen at the back painted pictures of travelling along dark roads, crashing waves at seasides, forests. But I think those images were there anyway, with Ben Howard's beautiful words bringing about these settings just through sound. And I think provoking the imagination is one of the most powerful things music can do.

Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra - Wednesday 24th October 2012 - Manchester Cathedral

When I was eleven years old, I stumbled across the Dresden Dolls on the Internet. I was maybe too young at the time, but it did me no bad, and Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione's music opened my mind at a time it needed to be opened. A little later, I bought Amanda's solo album "Who Killed Amanda Palmer?", and this year her new release, "Theatre is Evil", with her new band the Grand Theft Orchestra. On Wednesday, I went to see her play at Manchester Cathedral for the very first time.

I arrived at the Cathedral that afternoon way too early, and walked around inside for a while to kill some time. When I got outside I knew I hadn't done something stupid by arriving at three o clock, because people were already there and they were unmistakeably Amanda Palmer fans. They were dressed up, in bright lipstick and dramatic eyeliner and a lot of black lace and tattoos, with more ukeleles than I think I've ever seen in one place.

I don't quite know how it happened but ten or twenty of us ended up assembled in the gardens outside the Urbis museum. People played ukeleles whilst everyone sang together, a girl dressed in steampunk attire recited poetry and every so often random passers-by would stop, kind of confused about whatever it was that went on.

When doors opened at seven o clock, the crowd assembled around the small stage, in the centre of the crucifix that beautiful Manchester Cathedral is shaped as. And then, unexpectedly, a brass band started to play, and the whole audience swivelled to face the back of the building where they appeared from. They were the Horndog Brass Brand, from Edinburgh, and it was a such a perfect opening to the loud and theatrical nature of Amanda Palmer's show.

After the cathedral's reverend (!) came on to ask for donations and tell everyone to have a good time, Amanda introduced Jherek Bischoff, of the Grand Theft Orchestra, the second support act. Jherek was a bass player accompanied with strings, conducting them not with his hands but his entire body as he moved about the stage, lurching from side to side. He went from bass to ukelele, very song he played was radically different from the one before.

Amanda came on to introduce the next of her opening bands, and in attempt to "loosen up" the quiet and respectful audience, instructed everyone to close their eyes, turn their head towards the ceiling, throw their arms open and on 1, 2, 3,  scream.
We all did. All at once. And being surrounded by chaos I think it was one of the most relaxing moments I've experienced.
The band she was introducing were The Simple Pleasure, an electro-punk band, their set made up of sparkly costumes and thrown around flamingo sculptures, a lot of dancing and audience interaction.

And then Amanda Fucking Palmer came on.

She appeared above the stage, singing down from a balcony, the whole place dark except for a spotlight on her. It was very Phantom of the Opera, as she sang completely acapella, surveying the cathedral, an old English folk song.

Amanda descended to the stage as "A Grand Theft Intermission" was played, big and striking and drastic, and she and her drummer threw out bunches of flowers to the audience. She made every song an anthem, the whole audience dancing and singing along with the words as if it were all that they believed, teenage kids and men, and women in lipstick and coloured wigs.

Her band, the Grand Theft Orchestra, were individually so talented and perfectly woven together as a whole, and you could just tell each of them shared everything about Amanda's ethos and attitude to music. Amanda herself was so passionate, slaying piano and at one point caressing the hair of the guy in front of me during "The Killing Type" when she stood up to sing, leaning right into the crowd and holding eye contact.





















"Smile" was amazing, every member of the audience singing along, on the tips of their toes, and "The Bed Song"  beautiful and heartbreaking, but the show was as playful as it was serious and intense. During "Missed Me", Amanda and her band would freeze like dolls, then spring to action and run across the stage to trade instruments between each verse, going from piano to bass to drums and back.

Amanda Palmer is one of the most hardworking and honest musicians I can think of, and as she went past the venue's curfew it wasn't possible for her to play an encore. She shrugged this off, of course, as no problem and told the crowd she would find somewhere "Probably legal" outdoors to finish the show. This ended up being the gatepost of the cathedral gardens, where most of the crowd gathered around outside to listen to her play "Oasis", an ironically cheerful song about abortion, "Creep", a cover of Radiohead's classic and "Ukelele Anthem" on her ukelele, singing along with every word.
"Stop pretending art is hard."

Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra are back in the UK in March next year, and touring the world between then and now. If you go to her website you can look at tour dates, or buy her new album, which is also avaliable for free download if you're broke.

And I can't really think of a better way to conclude this, than saying how I have never witnessed more of a sense of mutual love between absolute strangers, than over something such as an Amanda Palmer show. Because more than the perfection or the chaos, all that art boils down to is the ways that it brings people together.

Athlete - Sunday 14th October 2012 - The Crown Hotel Ballroom, Nantwich

Athlete are an indie-rock band from London, made up of Joel Pott, Carey Willetts, Tim Wanstall and Stephen Roberts. They had a lot of success in the mid 2000s at the same time as bands like Snow Patrol and the Kaiser Chiefs, when music like this was becoming "cool" again. You've probably heard of them for singles "Vehicles and Animals and "Superhuman Touch" - a song I first heard in 2009, then lost for a while. Literally, I lost it, I could hum the chorus but didn't know the name or who it was by. A few months ago, I rediscovered it and I'm so happy I did.

I found out they were playing here about a month ago and was surprised to say the least. Nantwich is where I live, a small, kind of dreary town in the flattest county in England. It's full of Tudor buildings and independent shops, places full of trinket type gifts and old-style sweet shops, a tourist town, and apart from a few local folk bands, I'm sure you can imagine it definitely isn't the sort of place live music is abundantly alive.

This week, the Words and Music Festival has challenged this lingering sense of absolutely nothing that the town holds, though the only show I managed to get down to was Athlete at The Crown Hotel Ballroom on Sunday night, the last night of the festival. And as I normally go to Manchester, Liverpool or London to get to shows it was really nice to just walk about fifteen minutes from my house.

The opening act was Fran Smith, a piano playing singer-songwriter who's about to support folk musician Thea Gilmore on tour. She was young and nervous and smiley, but completely relaxed as she played and sang lovely compositions in a vague Yorkshire accent, dawdling between what sounded sometimes like Gaelic folk music ("We Will Have No More Marriages" in particular) and what was closer to pop music (a song I think was called "1013 Days"). Fran finished her set with "Orion", a beautiful song about two lovers, one who sleeps through the day and at night is the stars, the other goddess of the morning.

During the break, organiser Nigel Stonier came out to talk to the crowd about turning phones off. A raffle was drawn. It felt very close to home but also I knew I was at a concert, a strange juxtaposition.

And then they came on stage.

It was only Joel and Carey tonight, a stripped back acoustic set to fit the venue, a small ballroom with a bar at the back where people were drinking and talking a little too loudly during the support act.


Their music, normally entwined with a lot of keyboard effects, was just as lovely in a stripped back setting. Joel Pott switched between acoustic and electric guitars, whilst Carey Willetts did a little of everything; he played guitar, he played keyboards, sang backing vocals and used a laptop during a few songs for drum noises.

It was, I suppose, a pretty "tough crowd" - well-dressed people in their forties dawdling around getting drinks, kind of acting like they were at a bar instead of a concert and I hadn't wanted to go with the very teenage attitude of expecting people in the town I live in to be that way, but that was just how it was. Until Athlete came on stage, during which I was really pleasantly surprised. It was during "We Got the Style" that at one point Joel stopped singing and the whole crowd echoed the chorus:
"Woah, it's getting hot in here, must be something in the atmousphere."
And it made me laugh and smile so so much.

The whole show was so relaxed and the two of them clearly so comfortable on stage after all these years of doing it. There were a couple who requested a song for their wedding anniversary, stories about how recently Carey "nearly died" after epiglottitis, jokes about Westlife and much more audience interaction that I'd have expected from these weird conservative avoid-your-eyes-in-the-street people I have grown up around.

Highlights included "El Salvador", which with just a keyboard and guitar sounded so different to the album version, "Half Light", and gorgeous "Superhuman Touch", completely acoustic and so pure-sounding.

They finished with "Wires", a song about the first night of a child's life spent in hospital, "Running down corridors through, automatic doors" and it's incredible. The whole room were singing and seeing as I was there on my own and sat next to strangers it was easy to be unashamed about the fact that tears were streaming down my face, until the woman next to me turned and looked at me a little awkwardly once the song was over, all was out. But she didn't frown or look disapproving, there was no "Kids, these days." She just sort of smiled and nodded like she understood. And for once I didn't have to take a train a long way to find music and people that could restore my faith in humanity.

After ten years, a lot of hits and an Ivor Novello award, Athlete are finally winding down now, so catch them while you can - they're playing a few shows around London at the start of next month I think, then supporting Alanis Morissette on her tour in November.

Bo Bruce - Upstairs at The Garage, Islington - Thursday 16th August 2012
Small Warm Up Gig for V-Festival

The first thing you need to know about Bo is that if you're from the UK, you're likely to know her as the girl who came as runner-up on a TV talent show called The Voice, but she's not at all the commercialised sell-out we've come to expect from these things. Bo has been, and will be, writing beautiful songs for years. Her 2010 EP "Search The Night" recently reached #2 on iTunes, showing that she's already developed a fanbase that love her for the art she makes, not just because of hearing her sing some albeit brilliant cover songs on TV.

The Garage is a really small venue in Islington, its upstairs room last night was filled with candles. I arrived stupidly early, having dragged my French exchange sister on a train journey from Cheshire to London and found a place at the very front, about two metres from where the mic stand was poised, deciding to sit on the floor cross-legged and see if the people in the front row did it and everyone else would follow, something I've always wanted to try, and in a sense it almost worked.

Until the support act, Ben Montague, took to the stage, in which the small crowd of around 100 filling up the room. He makes what I would say is folk-pop music, and sang love songs alone with another acoustic guitar player, instead of the full band he normally plays with, but his more stripped back versions of songs had no trouble filling the room. At one point he actually asked the sound guy to turn down the volume, which someone commented was probably the first time a musician's done that on stage. He played brilliantly, the only fuck-up being when he thanked "Jo... wait, Bo!" for having him, and managed to have the crowd singing along during one song.. He's @ben_montague on Twitter, recently got playlisted by Radio 2 and you should definitely check him out.

A while past nine, it was announced that Bo was about to take to the stage and her band entered first: from what I recall a drummer, a guitarist and two keyboard players.* They played the instantly recognisable introduction to David Guetta's "Without You", which was Bo's audition song on The Voice, and she came on and started to sing.

Bo's voice, on stage, is one of the most beautiful and perfect I've ever heard. The only difference between her studio recordings and live performance is the lack of reverb. For those unfamiliar, Bo Bruce has the kind of breathy, "wispy" (a word my friend used to describe her, I quite like it) style of singing that's compared most often to Sinead O'Connor and Dolores O'Riordan from The Cranberries, using glottal strokes and mini-yodels, sliding into tiny gasps of falsetto at the end of a note.

Bo's second song was an original, the thoughtful and haunting "Behind the Gates", followed by "Fighting Arizona" which is also from Bo's EP "Search The Night", an offer of comfort and support to a friend stuck in the cycle of crime and drug addiction.

Then, she sang a gorgeous rendition of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill", this quiet and respectful three minutes of mutual audience understanding where there was no cheering, no singing along, but a kind of silence and communion.

"Black Ice" is beautiful, and admittedly I spent the entire time trying to watch what the keyboard player was doing as I've been sitting at the piano late at night attempting to scribble out sheet music for a whole week now. It's a song about a broken relationship, where Bo's gorgeous vocals soar in her upper range.

Bo announced her "last song" would be "Charlie Brown", and I almost feel ashamed about the fact that it was one of my favourite songs of the night (actually, it was fantastic) because it was a cover. But the Coldplay song suits her so perfectly and it was the point in the night where confidence that had been wavering at the start had truly soared. The room was full of dancing and smiling, I felt this growing lump in my throat because I can't help but say that when she sings "Charlie Brown" it sounds like rainbows. I'm sleep deprived, inarticulate and slightly crazy right now but it does, it sounds like rainbows.

After calls for an encore, she played an absolutely gorgeous new song called "The Fall", with just a piano, which I expect will be on her new album in October. In the area I was stood there were several people in tears.

After the show, Bo was nice enough to take the time to spend a few minutes with each and every person who waited behind and I think of all the musicians I've seen she might be the one that shows the most care and trust in her fans. She hugged and kissed everyone and was lovely to talk to and very grateful (I brought her some cookies).

Everything about her is original and a work of art - the way she sings, writes, looks and moves about the stage, and I really think there's going to be such a wide market for this girl.

One of the only criticisms I have about last night is how few original songs she played in comparison with covers (although I know doing this is what helped her success) and I have a theory she doesn't quite realise how many people have heard of and love the things she writes, too. Having said that, all three of the cover songs she sang last night were completely perfect.

Bo's career is really just beginning to blossom - she has an album release planned for the autumn, and a UK tour in the winter planned. Intimate, tiny gigs are my favourite and I really recommend you go see her whilst shows are still this small.

***

*Please correct me if I got this wrong and you were there!