Lanterns On The Lake played only their second show of the year on Saturday night at La Belle Angele in Edinburgh as part of the venue's week of shows to coincide with the final week of the Edinburgh Fringe. Previewing four unreleased songs as well as favourites from across their career, they delighted an audience that stood and drank in the atmosphere created by one of the country's finest and most underrated bands.
Tonight Lanterns On The Lake are a four-piece. Whether that's down to other musical commitments of Angela Chan and Philip Selway or an indicator of a change of line-up is a discussion for another time, but the four of them give the songs a much harder edge without strings and the second drummer. This doesn't come at the cost of the intimate beauty that lies at the heart of Lanterns On The Lake's songs though, nor the dramatic tension that builds and the affecting tone of Hazel Wilde's vocals that give the songs a lived-in gravitas. The Edinburgh audience, chatty during the interval and at the back during the opener, fall silent as the songs weave their magic and everyone in the room focuses intently on the stage.
They take us on a seventy-minute journey through their back catalogue and give tantalising tasters of what's to come. They go back to early singles Another Tale From Another English Town and Through The Cellar Door, resurrect the powerful The Crawl and when everyone except Hazel leaves the stage, she treats us to a solo rendition of Green And Gold, seated at the piano accompanied by just the quiet whirr of the venue's air conditioning. It's a moment of such intensity that demonstrates the simple power of an instrument and a voice and the right words to touch the heart, soul and mind.
That's something Lanterns On The Lake do with each and every song. Beings is the penultimate song of the night, growing from a whisper to a rousing cacophony at the end as Paul Gregory uses a violin bow to play his guitar, lost in the moment, but fully in step with his band mates at the same time. One of the most magical thing about Lanterns On The Lake is their innate ability to absolutely control the listener's emotion with the pace and direction of the song and they do this time and again tonight, even with the new songs.
Those new songs don't represent a radical change of direction from the band, thankfully, but explore the same sonic territory from a different angle. Follow grabs the audience and draws them in immediately, Heavy has a wistfulness to it that's seated in the reality of modern-day living for the majority of us whilst Last Days feels like a commentary on the messed-up state of the world, a fitting sign off to the night.
There's moments of levity too, jokes between Hazel and Paul about the time it takes Paul to retune guitars, and an admission from Hazel that she got part of String Theory wrong after introducing it by telling us Paul's amp packed in the last time they played it. There's a shout out to the North Shields crew that are there with them, a question as to whether we're here specifically for them or just because of the festival - the answer being unequivocally the former.
That Lanterns On The Lake are still with us is a triumph in itself, such is the gruelling thankless nature of being a musician today without major label backing or a parental funding stream. That there's new music on the way, we assume, is an even greater one. Fiercely independent, there's no one else out there quite like them right now - there's no big singalong choruses or earworm hooks; their music requires and demands attention in songs that get to the heart of human emotions and interactions. In a world where instant gratification is demanded by most, the rewards of immersing yourself in Lanterns On The Lake are far deeper and more lasting.
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