The Everyday Gig Review Roundup (December '21)

Welcome to December and another live gig review roundup, brought to you by the most music-obsessed members of the Everyday Magazine clan.

We’re kicking off with a truly magical experience when culture editor Kerry Mead heads out into the dark, rainy depths of Broadmead in Bristol to worship at the altar of off-kilter folk/pop/electro time and mind benders Hen Ogledd at Strange Brew. It was a ride.

Hen Ogledd @ Strange Brew, Bristol. Wednesday 8th December 2021.

Words and images by Kerry Mead.

I think everyone has got those albums that got them through the last two years of lock downs; one of mine was Hen Ogledd’s second album Free Humans. It sustained me through the lonely, dark months of January and February played on repeat - if I could still bang out “Take all your hate, take all your feeeee-ar with youuu” at the top of my lungs whilst pounding the pavements circling an icy lake on muddy morning runs, I knew I was still alive.

I’ve been a fan since Mark Riley first played Tiny Witch Hunter on the radio in 2018 and I stood rapt in the middle of the kitchen thinking ‘What the fuck is this? I love it!’. So, the excitement of seeing them live in a warm, human-filled space for the first time was real - I hadn’t looked forward to a gig so much in ages.

Hen Ogledd were formed by experimental folk behemoth Richard Dawson and harpist Rhodri Davies in 2012; since then they’ve been joined by Sally Pilkington and Dawn Bothwell. They take their name from the Welsh term for the Old North, reflecting the quartet’s Welsh, Northern and Scottish roots. Pilkington brings her earthy, pitch-perfect soaring vocals and Bothwell brings off-kilter lyric-bombs and witchy-technoesque mixing desk sensibilities to Dawson and Davies’ original avant-garde folk duo. If you like wonky, folkloric, fluoro-pagan pop and electro weirdness that magnetically pulls you deeper into your local woods filled with oak, mistletoe and strange funghi (who doesn’t?), you’re going to love Hen Ogledd.

Strange Brew is a relatively new addition to the Bristol arts and music scene, a DIY-edged space deep in the heart of brutalist 60’s Broadmead, and as we walked through the fairy-light festooned door we were greeted by the silence of a rapt crowd and the staccato sound of tap dancing and a sewing machine provided by tonight’s support, the Bristol-based art performance duet Tapsew. The hushed, serious crowd and domesticity-as-high-drama may not be what some gig goers may have expected to greet them, but a Hen Ogledd support act was never going to be a dull indie band.

The atmosphere in Strange Brew warmed up with the glow and buzz of fanpower as Hen Ogledd came onto stage and began to assemble their gear and hang their union-banner-like fluoro-folk tapestries. There is no easing the crowd in with a couple of unreleased tracks here to start the set - the glow hit me head on as they launched straight in with the rousing Farewell and the crowd responded by heading straight down the front and belting the band’s faultless and soaring harmonics straight back at them.

Hen Ogledd bend and play with time for the next hour and twenty minutes - the set flies by, crammed with tracks from their last two albums and new EP release, ranging from fast-paced and dance-worthy moments to time-suspended, hovering, stretched-out periods of shared reverie.

The whole vibe is thoughtful, inventive, humorous and joyful calls to arms, delivered with a whirling cohesivity of all the parts each member brings blending skilfully together. Rhodri Davies uses his harp in ways I have never seen a harp used before - it’s equal parts gentle instrument and harp-smashing heavy rock akin to axe guitar, his deadpan voice and lyrics injecting humour and aplomb to many of their tracks, coming into its own on newest release ‘Tip Trip (Trip to the Tip) - I’m totally there waiting in a supermarket queue in Swansea overhearing the incensed bloke in front of me lamenting the sorry state of the local municipal waste facilities (it’s more fun than it sounds).

Dawn Bothwell delivers her disparate, surreal lyricism with a stilted almost-naivety, best showcased on tracks like Trouble and medieval wigout Kebran Gospel Gossip, yet both her and Sally Pilkington’s control of their instruments and mixing desk are far from naive; building ethereal, surging whirls of electronic crescendos to rival any contemporary dance music outfits out there right now.

And then there is Richard Dawson - overseeing the whole affair on guitar with a buddha-like calm and stillness interspersed with moments of fiery intensity; his range-stretching vocals soaring and sweeping over, below and beyond; providing layers ranging from deep and sombre to flying falsetto to Hen Ogledd’s already complex sound.

The whole set is faultless; it’s hard to pick out any standout tracks, from the wigging-out joy of tracks like Problem Child and Bwganod to the pure vocoder pop purity of Time Party. But the tracks where Hen Ogledd really come into their own live are those moments when their soaring harmonies meld faultlessly to lift us all into a communal state, every member of the audience singing along at the tops of their lungs to Space Golf or Remains, the band obviously loving it as much as we are. Moments when I am reminded of the pure energy of shared song, talking of and celebrating nature and the mundane humane; something we’ve maybe forgotten how to do through the ages. Tears pricked my eyes at times when the whole room was singing with no self-consciousness, maybe because this was the kind of shared experience I was craving listening to Hen Ogledd during those icy, solitary runs through trees and around lakes during the winter lock down, or maybe just because my cold, concrete heart has cracked a little at last.

Hen Ogledd’s deft, surreal blending of the archaic and the modern is definitely something you need to experience if you haven’t already - the innate glitchiness of their atemporal sound acting as a salve against the rough edges of the bleak contemporary landscape we currently find ourselves in. It’s a place where we can find hope, which seems to be hard to carve out nowadays.

Go and buy a copy of their new EP No Wood Accepted on Domino Records now. Follow Hen Ogledd on Twitter and Instagram.

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