Drinking the Shearwater of the Dawn Chorus at Wembly
Three bands Saturday night. Three women bass players. Go figure.
Wembly opened. Neven, the guitar player, handed out buttons beforehand… which was cool. Nice to get a small bonus for showing up for the opening acts. Anyway, I thought Wembly was charming (can’t think of a more appropriate word). My foot was tapping pretty much through their entire set.
Dawn Chorus was up next. Not quite sure what to make of this band. I can’t really pin point their sound. A couple of songs were really good and a couple of songs were kind of just there. I’d need another listen to decide where they fall on my musical fence.
Shearwater. Oh, my. What a band. When Jonathan opened up with the first song… just singing his guts out… it was so quiet you could hear a pin drop (which is an extreme rarity there). Everyone had a deer in the headlights look. It was eerie… and amazing.
They only played about an hour, but they covered a lot of ground (not counting the run around the building between sets). Rooks and The Snow Leopard (I’m the one screaming for the latter in the encore) from the latest CD plus Seventy-four, Seventy-five and others (I’m horrible with song titles) from Palo Santo.
Conclusion: Shearwater is one of those bands everyone should see. Period. End of discussion.
More pictures here.
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