Live Review
Post War Years – St Brides, Liverpool
Art and music have always been a dysfunctional couple, either cosily sitting together in a pub corner or fighting outside it; but it’s the fringe of these mediums and collaborations that produces the best work.
Tonight’s event is the second in a quartet of gatherings at St Brides, the first being ‘Birth’, tonight’s event ‘Marriage’, ‘Funeral’ and culminating in ‘Future‘.
Having it based in a church immediately conjures a certain ambience, to add the stage and bookend it with giant cut out cat heads pushes it into the surreal; but everything has it’s place tonight, and although there are strange elements it pulls together nicely; as a bride slowly walks towards the stage and gets proceedings underway with the opening turn muses on every connotation of ‘Marriage’.
Although music is indeed on offer here tonight, one of the most startling revelations comes from a poet or vocal pugilist as Danny J prefers.
Like a poetic Rahzel his spoken word is sound tracked by his own voice, mixing every sound you could make with your vocal chords…and some you can’t, and some you don’t believe come from voice box at all; reversed voices and sound effects at every junction.
It’s all falls beautifully together in ‘Fathers day’ an ode to his youth and parenthood that’s both touching, though provoking and humble.
You have to remember here that the organisers and acts have all entered completely into the sprit of things, resplended in wedding apparel, wandering around and mixing with the audience, some of whom have also decided-as instructed-to ‘Dress nice, but don’t outshine the bride’. The bride in question is still moving around also, all albeit at an extremely reduced pace, a pace that comes as a complete surprise to an audience member as she glides ever-so-slowly behind him and passes him a rose.
The entire ocular banquet is perfectly visualised when at one point you look up and realize that wedding footage is being projected across the entire ceiling, in a strange and nostalgic fashion-only it’s not someone you recognize.
With the appetite truly whetted Post war years are suddenly upon the stage, there’s two basses, a keyboard and an entirely unconventional set up-but then that’s PWY’s. Or is it?
Despite taking several unconventional electronic routes to complete the songs they never let you fall too far behind and constantly leave a bread crumb trail of absolutely solid melodic lines to follow.
It’s a winding and thin road PWY’s travel, at any point it could lock out an audience and indeed become insular and inaccessible-tonight though they stay on the straight and narrow.
Post play music ad men dream of-angular and different, but memorable and emotional-here’s hoping they never get a hold of them and the fantastic music continues unabated.
Poet Luke Cannard possibly resembles the closest thing to what many would assume a poet to be, but at the same time puts enough of himself and indeed his dry as sand-covered-bone humour to release some of the shackles that sometimes make poetry pretentious and unapproachable.
It seems like an off the cuff performance-several bits of paper are liberally swapped and read out in no seemingly discernable order-giving a fragmented recital. When a stream of thought is followed through, particularly with the ‘Murderer’ sections, it’s very entertaining and absorbing with just enough surrealistic sentences to not entirely take it’s self too seriously.
It’s finally left then to Cats in Paris, who tonight have taken on the mantle of wedding disco to close the evening.
Politely waiting, hands behind backs whilst the sound check takes place CIP are sternly serious about their performance, the opening of which is clinical and striking, massive lines of sound before settling into spiralling instrumentalism.
As playful as it is serious, there’s clearly a tremendous amount of effort gone into trying to create something new, different-which can be sometimes be a precursor to the short comings of an uncharted musical excursion. Nothing could be further from the truth however, were the cats are concerned.
The nights theatrics seem to suit CIP perfectly providing a perfect backdrop for them and a complete experience for the listener and viewer.
With tonight proving a success, the organises have provided people with a strange situation-the prospect of actually looking forward to the upcoming ‘Funeral‘.