Touring in support of their new album, Wide-Eyed Nowhere, TURIN BRAKES played a quite spectacular set in Edinburgh’s La Belle Angele.
Support tonight comes from Tommy Ashby. One man, a guitar and a winning charm. Tommy, gave us a short but memorable set which included Happy Just To Know which was written at the end of February 2020.
Happy Just To Know has garnered much critical acclaim, and it’s even been chosen by Dutch supermarket PLUS for its major television advertising campaign.
It’s delightfully buoyant indie-folk song, peppered with Tommy’s signature spacey atmospherics throughout. The two vocals dance and swirl beautifully in tandem to completely immerse the listener in a blossoming love story.
The lyrics also include echoes that will ring true for anyone who has lived through the past few years of the Covid-19 pandemic, perhaps missing loved ones.
Tommy has a PhD in Psychoacoustics. The accolade which has given him a deep understanding of how the brain processes sound has been used to great effect whilst producing his own tracks over the last months. Evolving his sound in a makeshift studio and skipping between instruments, as well as experimenting with unconventional vocal sounds, or hitting the wall for a specific sound effect.
Thought the set you could definitely hear his musical influences such as Neil Young, Simon and Garfunkel, Dixie Chicks, John Martyn, Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings and Jeff Buckley to name a few coming through and the warm appreciation he received at the end of his set should bolster his confidence no end.
Touring in support of their new album, Wide-Eyed Nowhere, Turin Brakes played a quite spectacular set in La Belle Angele, It’s the perfect venue for their blend of intimate slightly left field rock – and the occasional wig out.
The bands iconic debut LP, The Optimist recently exited its teenage years and turned 20 and the lads played a good few numbers from the album and the rapport with the crowd was as strong as ever. If it’s that feeling of connection that you seek from a gig then they’re the band to see.
The crowd relished in singing along to punchy album numbers State of Things and Slack while slow burners Emergency 72 and Starship had the crowd hanging on to every note to fall out of frontman Olly Knights’ mouth as he turned out an evening of vocal mastery; with his founding band mate, Gale Paridjanian providing the set with more than a few epic guitar riffs and faultless picking.
Drawing attention to the fact that “many people had to make the decision to come out tonight”, Knights often thanked the crowd for coming to see the quartet as they made their return to the world of touring after such a lengthy and involuntary hiatus.
While Paridjanian made the occasional joke around his bandmates use of less-traditional instruments within some of the songs on the set list, Knights would offer up periodic anecdotes ahead of some of the nights numbers; his story about being 15 years old and writing the lyrics to Future Boy while waiting for a train at Pimlico station adding further insight into song.
With a slight yearning in his voice, Gales takes us back to the Summer of 2003, “Before the days of Facebook..” and the explosion of technology, into the opening notes of the brilliant Painkiller from the album Ether Song. The band then hurtled towards the end of the set with Fishing for a Dream and Long Distance.
If you love guitars, beautiful melodies, amazing vocals, ballads and uptempo songs… check out Turin Brakes….you won’t be disappointed.
Words and pictures: Stuart Stott @stuarty33