A special solo trip to the Norwegian Church arts centre on 9th March to see Icelandic band hjaltalín together with support from Dry The River. I heard about the show via email lists from the people behind Swn (join the list/Facebook group if you haven't already). Partly from lack of time, I treated the evening as a 'random gig number 3' so wasn't sure what to expect! Turns out it was an excellent evening (shades of last year's Woodpigeon gig) & pretty much a capacity crowd. A note for cake lovers -the cafe/bar at the Church was still selling foodie bits along with drinks, had a hard time resisting!
Dry The River were very good. I don't know much about their background (plenty of scope online as they have both a website and myspace), but their set (all new stuff - believe the debut album is currently being recorded) seemed to me to show shades of William Elliott Whitmore, Jeff Buckley; lo fi indie ish with a bit of modern folk thrown in. Very interesting, well received. Their EP 'the chambers and the valves' was on sale and I think at least half of the audience bought it! Definitely worth looking out for them again.
The majority of gig-goers seemed very much to be hjaltalín fans, enthusiastic from the start. I'm not really sure how to describe hjaltalín's songs so I'll start with their myspace description -pop/lounge/showtunes/classsoul! The 7 piece band included a bassoon (played by the lovely Rebekka) and violinist Viktor, who spent a good part of the set playing his violin like a ukelele! Fantastic. As to the songs themselves (which were all sung in English), they were a mix of modern folk (again), bit funky, bit indie/rock, reminded me in part of Clare and the Reasons. Whilst they were thoroughly entertaining, with some excellent banter and stories from main singer Sigga, some tracks interested me a lot more than others. There seemed to be a lot of style shifting mid song which was sometimes disconcerting. New album (which they had a few copies for sale, didn't get it though), title unknown, is due in the UK in May (hopefully the lovely people at Spillers will advertise the release date). Maybe they're a band that require a few listens to truly appreciate.
The Philharmonia's visit to Cardiff on 27th Feb was also very good, and quite full. I think most attendees had been caught by pianist Nikolai Lugansky (there seemed to be more empty seats after the interval, anyway). The performance of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No 2 was excellent, Lugansky made it look very easy. He played very coolly and economically, with fewer mannerisms than I've seen on others. I discovered on pre-concert listening to M's 1972 Decca recording with Vladimir Ashkenazy & the London Philharmonic, that the concerto was written after Rachmaninov had been in receipt of hypnosis and psychoanalysis! Maybe important, maybe not - we enjoyed it anyway. Of the other pieces, Verdi's 'Overture, la forza del destino' was short and fun but the Symphonic Dances weren't quite as entertaining.
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