crazybobbles

So this isn’t the first time I’ve seen Shearwater play live. I saw them in September when they were playing at Bush Hall and thoroughly enjoyed it, it was so good that when they announced that they were playing in St Giles in the Fields, I immediatly booked tickets to see them once again. I knew that venues play a key ingredient to the sound the band makes so seeing them play in a biblical church just bumps their awesomeness

Jonathan Meiburg

I was still pretty tired after Sigur Rós so having a peaceful gig to watch whilst sitting on a pew was definitely a treat for me. After a tasty meal at a Korean BBQ, some random shopping at anime places (more on that another time), I began trekking to the venue worried that I was going to be late, I only managed to get there at 19.30pm, the doors were opened and noone was already, shit must be late!

I quickly ran into the church entrance and said I was here for the gig… turns out I wasn’t late at all, the bands were still doing soundchecks so the doors weren’t actually opened haha. I looked a bit silly so I apologised and shuffled my way back outside. Turns out people weren’t as keen as me in seeing the band.

Once in I managed to claim the best seat for the gig and chillaxed until more people turned up, I eventually met up with John and Adam who were talking about their journey back from Wood Green, I managed to offload more of my moocards. After some conversing the first band appeared.

Absentee

Unfortunately since I’m trying to keep these damn entries short I’m just going to write quick lines about each band. Apologies if you’re a fan of Bird Engine, Greg Weeks and/or Absentee:

• I really enjoyed Birdengine, he had a really nice voice which resonated through the church in a ghostly kind of way
• Greg Weeks were fun, they had a bag of percussion instruments and were all strategically standing in order of height.
• Absentee was cool, the singer had a nice and deep raspy voice which was nice to listen to in a church. They had a moog too, and moogs are made of win!

The Mighty THOR!

After the support bands, it was time to get ready for some Shearwater photolising, we met the Mighty Thor walking around the place so we quickly caught his attention to say hi and have a chat about this and that. The band was nearly finished setting their stuff up (yup, they do their own gear which is cool) so I quickly found a nice spot to do some photolising. Granted it was quite tricky taking photos of the band as a whole since the grand piano was below the stage and would require moving to the other side of the venue to take photos of the person behind it.

I managed to meet some people who were at the Andrew Bird gig, I gave them my moo mini cards and sat patiently for the band to be introduced, the next bit was pretty funny, whilst at my “photopit” spot, Jonathan Meiburg randomly appeared and sat right next to me haha, he said hi to me before going on stage which was funny (kinda reminded me of that band who spoke to me at Hoxton Bar and Kitchen). But yeah, twas funny seeing Jonathan sitting there for a bit. On with the show!

mmmm grand piano

KAAAAAFORMORMROAINSOISAHAOSIHDO! My ears! Gargh, didn’t take long for me to notice that standing RIGHT next to a PA soundsystem will rape your ears. Having no earplugs I quickly reached for my earphones, fortunately they were a nice substitution for earplugs and protected me from going deaf on spot. They started with a glacial rendition of On the death of the water which I love. It was nice seeing it played on the grand piano! They then moved on to Red sea, Black sea, Mountain Laurel and then Rooks (which was another one of my favourites). Here’s a video of them at it, note at how rediculously close I was to them :$:

Shearwater rocking it out

The setlist was pretty similar to the previous one, I get the feeling that they play the same set of songs throughout their tour which explained why they didn’t need a setlist (someone at the end asked Kim the bassist to write them one). What I loved most about this gig was that it was far more intimate than the previous one (even though I think St Giles has a higher capacity than Bush Hall).

Jonathan forgets his lines!

The band made remarks about how they felt “naughty” playing in a church and the MIGHTY THOR was constantly playing with the chandelier! (and Jonathan would stop to tell him off!). There was even a point where Jonathan totally lost the lyrics of a song and had to stop halfway (I always love it when that happens, it’s much more fun than a perfect gig with no communication).

The band covered a song from the Clinics which they had met and invited over to Texas to do Texas stuff. Another song that I enjoyed a lot of was Century Eyes (nom, video here). I found the music to be a whole lot better in terms of acoustics and I enjoyed the use of the grand piano to play their songs.

Shearwater say BAI!

After the show I managed to talk to Thor a bit more and ask him what the hell those instruments I saw him last time were, he explained the first one to be a Waterphone and described the history of it and how he and his friend made one from scratch (even though it leaked). Thor was definitely the friendliest person you could ever meet, he was all smiley and would hug you if you weren’t looking The friendly and fun vibe of the band was definitely there tonight and once again, Shearwater has proven that they’re no longer a side project band (last time I’ll mention that).