This is Whitehorse's first ever gig. It's sold out The Rose And Monkey weeks in advance. At the helm of the new band is Thomas Haywood, frontman of The Blinders who played their final shows back in February. With nine unreleased songs plus a cover of Amazing Snakeheads, Whitehorse revealed that the demise of his band hasn't dampened Haywood's creative spirit at all.
The original intent of this show was for Haywood to perform an acoustic set in support of The John Hall Foundation, a charity set up in the name of one of his former band's biggest champions to support local musicians making their first steps with sought-after and otherwise expensive rehearsal space. As he resided over in Sheffield as The Blinders finished, these songs became fully-formed and he decided to pull together a band to showcase them. They might have been light on rehearsal time, but Whitehorse would appear to have on first listen an album's worth of songs that stand up to most of their creator's previous outputs.
They open, with Haywood guitarless, with The Only One I Loved, an unreleased The Blinders' track that we've seen them perform at least once before. The lack of guitar becomes a comedy moment as they try to start the second song as Haywood realises his own guitar isn't behind him by the amps and he has to come back through the crowd to get it, whilst his unintroduced bandmates jam. It may be an inauspicious start, but it's part of the seat-of-the-pants try this out and see approach that he's taken with this new project as he goes back to the start.
The songs take a variety of approaches from the seductive style of The Blinders' second (and in our opinion masterpiece album) Fantasies Of A Stay At Home Psychopath to the more rockier heavier sound of its follow-up Electric Kool-Aid EPs and their final album Beholder. They feel more fluid that than the latter, perhaps being unburdened by the pressures of being signed to a major label and being responsible for a five-piece band. Valley Of Tears and This Lover Of Mine adhere to the former approach at the start of the set. Doesn't Come Close is one of the highlights, recalling the drama that characterised much of The Blinders' debut Columbia. The band might only have met recently in person and, by usual standards, are under-rehearsed, but it only rarely shows when Haywood asks them to quicken the pace.
What's Going On is a beautiful melodic song with guitarist John McCullagh adding vocals and another highlight, references to the BBC, dystopia and saluting the flag in the US, that builds to a repetitive crescendo at the end. Fake It is raw and edgy, less polished than what's gone before, but brimming with potential, building slowly with a jagged guitar at the start before other instruments come in.
Next up is a cover of Amazing Snakeheads' Heading For Heartbreak. Haywood stops the song after thirty seconds to explain why he chose the song describing their front man Dale Barclay, who tragically died of brain cancer in 2018 after only releasing one album into the world, as one of the most visceral songwriters he's known. It's a beautiful tribute and cover that hopefully had many of the audience heading home to find out more about them.
Diamonds In The Sun is more expansive and adventurous even in this early form and you sense in a bigger room where the band could really let go this song would grow into a sprawling multi-headed monster. It's very much appreciated by an audience who are here, judging by the pre-set chat, because of The Blinders but who aren't shouting out for their favourites before each song.
Deep Fields is the big rock-out song of the set, driven along by the drums and an aggressive lead riff. The set's rounded off by the gorgeous The First Of Spring ("we haven't written any more songs") that builds with a menacing tension musically offset by vocal harmonies and lasts close to six minutes as the band let loose at the end.
There's now a few shouts for Haywood to play more and after most of the room has cleared he does perform a couple of acoustic tracks including The Blinders' Circle Song which he dedicates to John Hall, turning to look at his mosaic portrait that hangs on The Rose And Monkey's wall as he does.
For a first outing there's a lot to be excited about with Whitehorse. In many ways Haywood is starting over again, but as the audience showed there's still plenty of latent goodwill from his previous band and their dedicated fans, whilst the songs themselves demonstrate that the creative lights are still on after the flicker of The Blinders dissolution and starting to burn bright. It'll be an interesting journey that Haywood takes from now on.
Whitehorse played The Only One I Loved, Valley Of Tears, This Lover Of Mine, Doesn't Come Close, What's Going On, Fake It, Heading For Heartbreak, Diamonds In The Sun, Deep Fields and The First Of Spring.
Follow Even The Stars on Twitter at @eventhestarsuk and like our Facebook page for all the latest updates
No comments:
Post a Comment