Gig review: Bridget Hayden and the Apparitions at Natural Endings, Todmorden
The Todmorden-based singer and musician performs songs from her new album on home turf.
“I’m quite nervous. There are so many you. I’m more used to there being four people,” Bridget Hayden admits after the first song of tonight’s spellbinding performance to a sold-out crowd.
Based on this evening’s performance, the Todmorden-based musician and singer may need to get used to attracting larger gatherings of listeners.
Released earlier this month on Todmorden’s reliably excellent Basin Rock label, the ghostly renditions of traditional folk songs that populate Hayden’s thoroughly compelling debut solo album Cold Blows The Rain may seem like a curveball after a lengthy journey of crafting cacophonous avant-rock noise as a member of Leeds collective Vibracathedral Orchestra and occasional contributor to US improv jam legends Sunburned Hand of The Man.
However, Hayden has long been in the habit of sneaking in folk songs into noisier solo sets, and she grew up with traditional material being played and sung at home.
A fondness for drones is the bridge that connects Hayden’s extensive experience as a noise/improv artist and the ethereal yet earthily robust renditions of the traditional repertoire aired tonight.
For the bulk of the performances, the harmonium of Sam Mcloughlin and viola of Dan Bridgewood-Hill – aka The Apparitions – establish and sustain a resonant, droning sound-bed for Hayden’s plucked and strummed banjo and gently soaring vocals to float atop of.
Free of old-timey affections and laboured vocal mannerisms, the resulting stately, majestic renditions shake off decades if not centuries of dust from such British folk evergreens as Blackwater Side and She Moved Through The Fair, with the latter slowed down to an almost disembodied pace, until the music seems to hang suspended in the air, heavy as the dark clouds that hover over the hills surrounding Todmorden on a rainy winter’s day.
This being the album release show for Cold Blows The Rain, the album is played through straight in the same sequence, but the live setting allows Hayden and The Apparitions even more opportunity to let the songs unfold at their own unhurried pace. In lesser hands, the aversion to sudden movements could turn into a monotonous endurance test in slow-motion gloom, but the effect tonight is irresistibly hypnotic, as it is on the album.
Considering the unfortunate fate that befalls many of the characters in the nine songs aired tonight, it’s somehow appropriate that the venue (decorated with a multitude of candles and tree branches hanging over the stage) is situated on the premises of a funeral director’s.
By stripping the traditional material to its bare bones and allowing the songs room to breathe and glow, Hayden and The Apparitions provide a welcome reminder that when delivered with the right commitment and care, timeworn traditional material can be just as alluringly heavy as the headiest slab of eardrum-testing noise.