GIG REVIEWS
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GIG REVIEWS |
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Evangelista
@ Leeds Holy Trinity Church 24.4.08 www.vanguard-online.co.uk This week is like a recreation of post-Beat era San Francisco, with ‘happenings’ here and there. Across town, what used to be Leeds’ Housing Advice Centre, unused for months, hosts a benefit concert for the squat there. What a laugh, taking over the unused space there to highlight the vacant properties in Leeds! While, here where I am, is another ‘happening’ – a ramshackle assemblage of three ‘DIY’ acts playing a city centre church. Of course it starts considerably late but no-one is perturbed amongst the noveau hippies and arty types and we mill around the pews, drinking our BYOB before the painful but heartfelt Paolo Dildo – a one-woman show – does her amateur hour thing. The small gathering tolerate Paolo’s unusual guitar tuning choices with good humour as random images flicker behind on the bedsheet film screen taped over the altar. When they eventually deign to start, Sophie’s Pigeons are rather good, thanks to singing in tune, playing in tune and keeping in time. The vocalist is a star and tumbles through the scales like Liz Fraser from The Cocteau Twins, backing vocals complement ideally and a sax and melodeon add local colour. Somewhere about half past ten the lights dim and the trippy projections stand out on the altar crucifix. A scratchy 78 of a tenor singing a hymn is played and a slow wave of sampled cymbals and overdriven guitar rises to fill the space. Carlo (does every woman here tonight have a fella’s name?) appears and incantates, intones her lyrics, mystical in delivery if profane in content. She strolls up and down the aisle to reach her mood and muse. The band rises to a huge crescendo. No beat or tune works here, all is sonic shape and teture, delivering a backdrop to Carlo but then she becomes a colour to the orchestral texture herself. The next piece awakes from a set of sampled bangs and whirrs. The drums bash lazily till a trill is established. The cello bows till he reaches accord with the guitarist, who studies on bended knees. The bass watches and listens, waiting till he feels right and Carlo gently wails. When the bass is ready, it is a threatening, subsonic throb. This is, as Jerry Garcia once said, “insect-fear music”. Carlo’s voice reveals a depth of timbre that becomes the most tuneful element as another huge crescendo is reached and a 60 second guitar solo is the highlight of the evening, making my hands weave tortured patterns in the air of the pew. Sometimes, like tonight, a whole evening is made by a few moments, when those moments are perfect. Though not a well-established band, Evangelista, as individuals, gig a lot and it shows in the improvisation, listening, interplay and willingness to spend time exploring the right sound with fellow voyagers. The third piece, delivered chiefly from recumbent positions on the floor, is five minutes in waking from ocean floor swells and doesn’t reach the heights of the others, petering out. Some band intros and we’re into the fourth piece. Sadly, forty minutes into the set and before the end of the piece, your reviewer has to leave. Shame – Carlo is singing quiet and throaty, complementing the church acoustics and twangy guitar and gentle steps issue from the rest of the band – it’s almost a country blues. Forty minutes in and it feels like the band is just settling, ready for a night of musical travelling. As I travel home, I marvel at the capacity for beatnik mindsets to persist through decades and inspire collective musical experiences and ways of living. Gigs like this are a way of life and a statement of purpose in a corporate world that tries to crush the small, unusual or merely unruly. |