The venue (The Fly on New Oxford Street) wasn't the best place to see Alasdair Roberts, but happily the audience were really paying attention, so it turned out well. He must have played seven or eight songs from the forthcoming album Amber Gatherers, and was bemused that people were calling out requests for songs that weren't out yet, including Firewater (which I don't think he played) and Where Twines the Path (which he did). The new material sounds good, but will probably improve with age and familiarity. I liked the introduction to Let Me Lie and Bleed Awhile: "It's like I Will Survive". For the time being I got more out of Carousing and Sweet William. The last song was A Lyke Wake Dirge, which segued into Kraftwerk's Radioactivity. Very topical since a Russian journalist recently died of radioactive poisoning in London.
Good support by Mary Hampton, which set the tone with a version of Pretty Polly.
My Trusted MOGs
a folk band cover of radioactivity? how did this sound? how did they perform it? you have piqued my curiousity.
My Trusted MOGs
Well, it wasn't a folk band; just one guy with a guitar, playing and singing. From what I remember, it was just slow (part of a dirge, after all). The last part was sung in German (Roberts is Scottish, but his mother is German).