Sometimes you walk into a gig not sure what to expect and walk out over the moon that you were there.
Craig Hughes opened the night, casually wandering on stage guitar in hand and with a wonderful chilled vibe, guided us through a mix of his new and older songs that leaned gently towards guitar blues with heartfelt lyrics delivered with his relaxed and sometimes emotionally fragile voice.
This felt very much like a gentle way of easing us into the nights performances.
After Craig, on walked Molly, full of energy and immediately chatty, with her Lancaster accent, her energy and enthusiasm was catching. Following performances with Lucy Spraggan and being included in BBC Introducing, her reputation is continuing to rightly grow. With her new EP having been release only 5 days earlier we were treated to stripped down versions of these songs plus some of her older songs including a full on versions of Universe and much crowd participation. As well as all these original songs we were also treated to "Running Up That Hill" from as Molly put it herself, a Kate Bush superfan.
Finally for the evening came one of the many iterations of Matt Dunwell's Solow Choir.
Having seen the full band experience earlier in the year this was the three member option, with Matt - vocals and acoustic guitar, Craig on electric guitar and Becca on vocals. With us only finding out at the end of the gig that this was Becca's first ever performance of the songs live!
So starting with this point, Matt and Becca's voices together were magical, complementing each other and helping to open up great arrangements of the songs to provide truly moving and powerful versions that were a pleasure to witness.
Starting with great versions of established songs including, Snow Day, Another Day and Low Light established the tone for the rest of the set and the crowd sat back enjoying the vibe.
Far too soon the set was over and everyone knew they had watched a great evening of wonderfully unique versions of great songs.
David
