Last night I saw the band Villagers at The Glee Club in Birmingham. It was an outstanding set from some very talented folk.
A couple of months back I bumped into a friend in town and ended up discussing Grizzly Bear, both agreeing that they were something pretty special. He then said how great they were live…I found out they had played at Warwick Arts Centre with Beach House supporting about two weeks prior, without my knowledge. In a list in my head there are a couple of bands/artists that I ‘need’ to see live before I/they die/recluse. Grizzly Bear are on this list, as is Sufjan Stevens amongst others. I am sure that the list will grow. When this happened I decided that I should go to all the gigs I realistically can for bands that I like, and I would keep an eye on who was playing where. I really regret it when I do miss a great act, so when I saw Villagers were playing I reserved a couple of tickets without hesitation.
The Glee Club is a strange yet great place to see and hear music. I have only seen comedy there before and they have a pretty stringent no-heckle policy. The attitude was the same for the gig. You get there by 8:15 or you don’t get in, you will listen to the support, you then get a break and go and smoke if that’s your sort of thing, then you watch the main event. The audience were silent (apart from applause naturally), which Conor himself repeatedly commented on. I can completely imagine after playing normal rooms, no matter how courteous the audience are, it is nice to be given so much respect. They did say we could dance to one number, but the sit-down format isn’t dance friendly, and to be honest I’m sure that my dancing skills are up to much anyway. I’m sure that there are similar venues everywhere, in fact there are a couple in Coventry such as Taylor John’s House.
The song above was the final song in the encore (although this recording isn’t from last night). It perfectly mixes a great simple melody in a bare mix. Sometimes five musicians can play over each other, rather than with each other, which I’ve certainly been guilty of.
We gave a standing ovation at the end. We did have an unfair advantage with this though as I’d argue it’s impossible to give a true standing ovation if you have been standing for the preceding 2 hours. Nonetheless, I think this meant that everyone there thought the same. I’m not so great a fan of forcing Top 5 lists, but this was one of those stand out gigs for me.
Found out today that they are also playing Hop Farm festival, which is a great surprise (although I should probably actually read up on who is playing that!). I would have happily sat through the gig straight after and not regretted it for a second. 10/10
(this wasn’t actually meant to be a review and I am not a reviewer, but it was too good not to write about)