Mondays are rubbish. Too far from the next weekend, a day for an early night and a desperate hope that tomorrow will be better. Except, of course, that makes Mondays tailor made for an evening of hushed, gentle, beautiful alt-folk.
Memorial are a Simon and Garfunkle-y two piece, clutching acoustic guitars and harmonies to melt hearts. Broken Record and Latch Key are gorgeous, feather light tunes that barely touch the ground. Even Amy, “a song about someone that wasn’t very nice”, doesn’t have the tiniest hint of malice. At the end of the set a girl, who had been listening, rapt, turned to her friend and said, “I want to take them home just so that they can sing me lullabies”. They would be perfect for that.
It can’t be that often that The Fleece has played host to someone responsible for winning eight Tony Awards and a handful of Grammys too. Anais Mitchell can boast all of those things, and more. Her huge Broadway hit, Hadestown, scooped all of the Tonys while her incredible collaboration with Eric D Johnson and Josh Kauan, as Bonny Light Horseman, collected most of the Grammys. Tonight, though, much of her wonderful set is taken from her latest, self-titled and eighth, album.
Whilst watching Mitchell the thing that keeps coming to mind is the fantastic, contemporary musical, Tick Tick Boom! Perhaps that’s not wildly surprising. Many of Mitchell’s songs are rooted in the minutiae of everyday America, many tell tiny little stories that resonate with massive themes, many feel like the narratives of a musical. Brooklyn Bridge and On Your Way (Felix Song) are postcards from New York, they are bright and thoughtful, the sort of songs to be sung, on a midnight rooftop, overlooking the five boroughs.
There’s something of the campfire troubadour of Mitchell too. She strums her battered acoustic guitar with an esoteric vigour, weaving her stories, pinging off aural Polaroids and conjuring a warmth out of thin air. She is backed, most of the time, by guitar, bass (sometime Bristol resident Rozi Plain) and the most delicate of scratchy percussion. The band provides an echo-y, wide-screen world, somewhere between the rural and the urban.
The wide-screen world is not one created by accident. Anais Mitchell makes music that feels like an indie film. Revenant, Backroads and Watershed all have a quiet power, they speak of nostalgia and homecoming, old places and new horizons. Her voice wrings every ounce of wide-eyed wonder from the poetry of her words. You might call Michell’s voice “girlish” – it is certainly high and crystal clear – but that would be to woefully underestimate the striking power that she possesses.
As much as the new songs are incredible it is an old one that is the highlight of the set. Wedding Song, taken from the original Hadestown album, has layers and depths and, crucially, a damn good tune. When you listen to it like this it seems so obvious that Mitchell was always going to write a beloved, wordy, clever musical.
Every song played tonight is treated with pin-drop respect – there are times when The Fleece has the hush of a church – but everyone is reacted to with overwhelming love. She banters back and forth with the audience and everyone buys into the Mitchell world. By the time she ends with a cover of Sheryl Crow’s Strong Enough, it is clear that she’s fully embraced that old adage of the stage – “always leave ’em wanting more”.
Gavin McNamara
TallFolk 