Elegantly understated and deftly enthralling, Hastings’ singer-songwriter Hayley Savage’s performance here at the De La war Pavilion tonight is both peaceful and demure.
Her charming songs are captivating and contemplative, and her performance in unselfconscious.
The applause she received time after time was both genuine and heartfelt – and by no means forced or polite as is sometimes the case at intimate gigs when audiences feel obliged to show some sense of gratitude regardless of talent…
All in all a great support slot from an up-and-coming star…
This Is the Kit may not have played live for ages, but their stage-show was still effortless… even if Kate Stables admitted to being “snoozy after too much trifle and chocolate coins…”
In this dark room it’s easy to pretend the audience is ten-fold from its socially distanced number – and you get the sense the band has rammed this idea into their heads in order to perform a set that truly befits their burgeoning status as an act worthy of proper-sized venues.
Every note and drum beat carefully chosen and crafted… nothing rushed.
Everything perfectly crafted.
Mark Knopfler guitar echoes are evocative of days gone by…
“This is our first chance to play these songs live since we recorded them in the first week of March way back in 2020,” says Kate, who goes on to take plenty of time tuning her guitar, but only to make it worse… ‘whoops, jinxed it!’ she laughs…
Tuning becomes a meme as the night goes on and Kate asks rhetorically ‘how do you tune a six string banjo?’
The answer is that only five of the tuning pegs are used! And Zither banjos are always a little bit out of tune.
As song follows song we hear a trickling extract of Eddie Bricknell, get a smidgen of rocking-out guitar hero treatment, and even a little Seth Lakeman-esque action…
… but weirder… building growing pulsing … too early, too late!
As the gig works its way to the end Kate shows her weakness as well as her strength.
Awkwardly wobbly and quaking she may have admitted to being – trying to remember how it goes. But ultimately This Is the Kit have what it takes and their forced absence from the scene hasn’t diminished their staying power.