Native Harrow - Voodoo Rooms Edinburgh

 I should really stop writing about Native Harrow gigs but they are so good I just can't. It's February so it is Native Harrow in Edinburgh gig time.  

It's the Voodoo Rooms for tonight which compared to my first review of them is the perfect venue. The Speakeasy room allows the intimacy for their warm Laurel Canyonesque tunes to connect with the audience. This tour to promote the recent album 'Old Kind of Magic' obviously heavily features songs from that album. Devin Tuel introduces 'Heart of Love' as a rare love song and after it an audience member shouts out 'write more love songs'. he might have a point but really for me that song which was definitely a stand out on the night actually encapsulates what what Native Harrow do best. Their songs seem timeless - see the Laurel Canyon reference. While they do have an echo of the canyons there are a lot of other influences in there. Stephen Harms bass runs show to these ears a jazz influence in their melody something he confirms afterwards - Danny Thompson is an influence. They perform as a two piece with Devin on guitar and vocals and Stephen on guitar, bass, keyboards and they manage to make it look easy as they capture the essence of their recordings and present something really quite sublime to their audience.

Native Harrow are much greater than the sum of their influences by a long stretch and I look forward to catching them again, perhaps next February. 

Shout out too for Maz O'Conner whose accomplished support helped create the mood for the night - stand out for me was her protest song 'Can't get enough of what I don't need'.  She's got plenty of other songs that you should find time to hear.

https://www.nativeharrow.com/

https://mazoconnor.com/

Throwing Muses/Anastasia Screamed - Edinburgh Calton Studios March 1991

 

EVER GONE TO A concert, got stuck at the back hardly able to see the stage, thinking that in spite of the ongoing rock'n'roll situation you'd rather be at home listening to the same songs on record? This was the Throwing Muses gig at the Calton Studios. Despite some snappy pop from the Real Ramona I left early, cheered somewhat by the Tony Iommi haircut of the bassist in Anastasia Screamed.

There in three sentences is my review of Throwing Muses from 1991. This was published in TLN (Tennents Live News) a free music magazine that ran for a few years alongside the brewers support for live music in Scotland at the time. I believe the Calton Studios benefitted from that investment. The section 'Short Lives' featured readers reviews of gigs limited to 60 words - I appear to have taken that quite literally unlike some of the other writers. I was surprised reading that I'd left early but I do remember being right up the back with limited views of the stage despite my height. I can only think that my girlfriend couldn't see a thing and that was a big factor in the early exit. I still have and listen to the Real Ramona and I do have the Anastasia Screamed album 'Laughing Down the Limehouse' (it kinda sounds like their name). I've since seen Kristin Hersh twice and stayed until the end both times.

Thanks to Edinburgh Gig Archive for the image edinburghgigarchive.com  And Thanks to TLN for the original publication. Note: perhaps bizarrely at the time of LeithNotes re-publication of this review the issue of TLN in which it features was available on Ebay for £9.99!

They also played - Kristin Hersh