Brudenell Social Club, Leeds 16/11/11
Living in Leeds I am blessed with a great small live music venue, the Brudenell Social Club. Thanks to good management in recent years it’s built a reputation for staging an imaginative range of artists, many before they break into the big time. It’s an old fashioned place in a traditional (now mainly student) part of the city which down the years has no doubt staged a fair number of stand up comedians and strippers. It holds about 400 in a split level arrangement. If you get down on the floor and away from the bar you can be pretty sure of being in the company of people who have come to see and listen to the band, rather than have an amplified conversation about their dog or whatever, as so often seems to be the case at larger venues.
Living in Leeds I am blessed with a great small live music venue, the Brudenell Social Club. Thanks to good management in recent years it’s built a reputation for staging an imaginative range of artists, many before they break into the big time. It’s an old fashioned place in a traditional (now mainly student) part of the city which down the years has no doubt staged a fair number of stand up comedians and strippers. It holds about 400 in a split level arrangement. If you get down on the floor and away from the bar you can be pretty sure of being in the company of people who have come to see and listen to the band, rather than have an amplified conversation about their dog or whatever, as so often seems to be the case at larger venues.
I saw Fleet Foxes at the Brudenell in June 2008 and it was a hushed, almost transcendental experience. Artists seem to thrive on the intimacy and the fantastic acoustics and it has the right ambience and feel to it that can only come from the natural rapport that seems to be generated between band and audience.
I’d only heard St Vincent about a week ago and snapped up a couple of the last remaining tickets at the weekend after reading this review in The Observer:-
The Brudenell is sold out and we gently edge our way down to the front to take up position stage right. When she gets underway it’s clear that St Vincent have spent a bit more time and money on the sound and lighting than your average band. It’s a proper show, with a well rehearsed feel to it. The sound is impeccable, the rim shots ricochet around the place and big fat squelchy synths underpin a vaguely 80s feel.
But it’s Clark’s show and she reels off a succession of bullet-like solos. Her vocals are crystalline. Only her between-song banter betrays any hint of nerves. Her lyrics are intense and personal :-
I spent the summer on my back
And over attack
Steal you just to get along
Get along
(Surgeon)
The feeling is one of a band and artist with a strong set of songs that will tour well next year and continue to tap into the mode of music that straddles genres, which refuses to be pigeon-holed.
I spent the summer on my back
And over attack
Steal you just to get along
Get along
(Surgeon)
The feeling is one of a band and artist with a strong set of songs that will tour well next year and continue to tap into the mode of music that straddles genres, which refuses to be pigeon-holed.
Towards the end she jumps into the crowd for a couple of minutes of gratuitous audience contact. It’s a familiar ego-levelling ploy these days which, analysed as such, probably means the reverse is true. No matter, St Vincent have put on a grand 80 minute show of funky electroclash dance rhythms and ethereal mind-bending ballads and – as is so often the case with Brudenell gigs – I leave with the feeling that they will have outgrown this type and size of venue very soon.
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