Twee As F***

Neil Jones on Pete and the Pirates, Silence at Sea, and the last performances at the 2007 Red Violin Festival

It was a quiet week of live music compared to last week’s jaunt around the teeming South-West, but what there was succeeded in keeping the withdrawal symptoms down to a minimum.

There were a few shows left of the Cardiff Red Violin festival, the first held in the foyer of the National Museum of Wales and featuring some young musicians from the Welsh College of Music and Drama. A decent crowd had gathered and sat itself down on the uncomfortable seats scattered around a piano in the centre, and first up was harpist Gwenllian Llyr playing William Matthias’s Santa Fe Suite with a charming shyness that she soon overcome to launch herself into the piece with increasing passion.

There’s a certain sense of ceremony when a harpist plays, and Llyr succeeds in conjuring an involving magic as the three movements etch their paths, the final Sun Dance being particularly fantastic, and after an enchanting fifteen minutes she departs with her exotic tool to deserved applause.

Aimee Byrett is up next on viola, playing a Rebecca Clarke passacaglia with a similarly shy grace, before Jamie Hughes renders a pleasing Britten waltz and Jenna Thorp etches a proficient coruscation by Huw Watkin. It’s a nice afternoon that leaves my ears ringing with hallowed music, and afterwards I can’t resist a walk round the museum, which has on a particularly good exhibition at the moment called “Wales around the world”, for which a large part of the building has been turned into a convincingly atmospheric, labyrinthine cave structure where dinosaurs roam (or at least stand) and a big Wooly Mammal slowly goes bald.

We have to wait till Tuesday for the last instalments of the Red Violin, both held in St David’s Hall, and the afternoon performance in the theatre features event organiser and esteemed player Madeleine Mitchell on violin besides renowned pianist Nigel Clayton. The duo play a variegated repertoire including Elgar’s Chanson de Matin opus 15 no 2 and Violin Sonata opus 82, Frank Bridge’s Romanze and Marceau Caracteristique and Jules Massenet’s Meditation from Thais, and I’m particularly taken by the Massenet piece, which is fantastic and grand in between the noble and oh so afternoon-romantic Elgars. Clayton’s playing is humble and serenely melodic, living and breathing every ebb of the romantic pieces, while Mitchell plays violin with a blindingly proficient kind of soul. Baritone Jeremy Huw Williams is wheeled out for the final serenade, and the retinue are well worth the elongated applause that sends them away happy.

The night time performance features folk violinist Eliza Carthy and her band, but I’m slightly disappointed to find it being held in the bar area rather than the inner theatre. We edge our way in and try our best to find some seats where our view won’t be massacred by one of the many pillars, and just as we do so Carthy begins with a robust show of bowing.

Carthy is at her best tonight when she lets her songs fly with that special dance-folk festivity that so becomes her, her playing during the more vibrant numbers insanely good, but for most of the night I just sit bemoaning the fact that this couldn’t have been held in a dirty grimy venue with a real crowd that’d get up and dance and give the band something to feed off, rather than strain to whisper intellectual profundities in each other’s ears, or, worse, simply speak them aloud to the annoyance and boredom of everyone else. This is not a clich・d whine about elitists, who are generally empty people anyway and not worth talking about, but a genuine feeling I have amidst it all. In the St David’s Hall bar with a plastic crowd and lots of pillars Carthy sounds merely ok, when in a rugged bar where people could run amuck and freely abuse each other it’d be fantastic. It’d also be a good idea to have included a clause whereby the players have to make the audience dance otherwise their pay would be forfeited. What’s the purpose of the fiddle in folk after all? Whatever, the Red Violin festival has been a welcome enchantment for the past nine days.

After Carthy I’m relieved to make a quick hop over to Clwb Ifor Bach, where Silence at Sea are enthralling a big crowd that’s come along for the meritable Oxjam foundation night. I’m not sure that many of the people here that have come for the epic indie headliners have ever heard music like this before, tender, poetic, melodic, razor sharp and twee as fuck, but tonight they get it with an extra giant cat suit, and free sweets.

It’s a regular thing at Silence at Sea shows that they put on some extra-curricular theatre, making them, I suppose, the Welsh Bobby McGees, but these are songs that really have to be heard. ‘Memorise Everything’ winds into its skewed chorus with propulsive grace, ‘Than Her Heart Allowed’ trickles along with a smile and a tear, and a blinding aura of Pop surrounds us all like a giant halo. Guitarist Gareth even keeps his giant cat suit on for the epic indie band after, which I think is equally fantastic.

It’s back to Clwb on Thursday night for Reading’s Pete and the Pirates, who released a set on Stolen Recordings last year that has rarely been far away from my stereo. There could be a few more people inside for opening band Everyone Else But Burt, but nevertheless they plough on with intrepid abandon. Everyone Else But Burt are a quaint fascination, the singer a relic from unknown times, in appearance a quarter Bruce Springsteen, a quarter Jonathan Richman, and a half Valleys’ rock star, but his songs tonight are fantastic. Burt kind of defy time and trend and plug away at their songs like a brilliant anachronism. They’re a trumpet-infused pop-rock band with a Jesus look-a-like on bass and a scarecrow on tambourine in the best surreal traditions, playing songs that at their best sway with a light summertime breeze.

The crowd has now gathered for Pete and the Pirates, but we do have to stand through a mainstream indie abomination called The Toy Band first, who posture and throw shapes and generally tow the line like a meek fish, but one more drink at the bar and here the headliners come. Pete and the Pirates are an unassuming-looking bunch, a Colin Murray look-a-like on bass and a guitarist stage-left who grabs the attention right from the outset by having a blinding resemblance to a young Darren Hayman, crouched busily over his guitar in quintessential style. In fact Hayman is a good comparison for the band, who have the same kind of noble ethos, out to spray an upbeat kind of indie magic that’s anchored by wondrous lyricism and poetry.

The Pirates’ songs are multi-layered little shimmering gems that shoot for the stars in blazing, spiralling shapes, there’s no folk pretensions, no retro pop stance, just melodies and songs so sharp as to cut you in half. Tonight they slay Cardiff without even trying, rounding off a quiet week in the city with dancing wonder.

© 2007 Neil Jones

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