Rare to non-existent are the evenings in Cardiff’s live music sinkholes where nothing goes wrong. Nothing winds you up, or makes you wish fiery torment raineth down on someone. Where the bands are all great, the sound perfect, the audience attentive and appreciative, the chattering pricks that haunt the quietest local gigs conspicuous by their absence. Where your faith in a really good night out is as firmly restored as it is this evening, basically. In Ten Feet Tall, of all places. What’s going on?
This unusual goodwill is helped no end by half an hour in the company of Barefoot Dance Of The Sea. I’ve made grand, borderline-illiterate claims for their aceness on this site before now; coming from the man who’s giving serious thought to playing ‘Anfield Rap’ at a forthcoming DJ assignment, you’d be justified in rolling your eyes. I’m right, though. Temporarily reduced to a duo (congratulations to Bec, proud mum for a second time just this week), the set is rejigged slightly, the piano left behind and the songs subtly rearranged for two voices. And with pin-drop sound in here tonight, the voices hang in the air exquisitely; one with the bell-like clarity of Kathryn Williams or Laura Veirs, the other trembling and poignant as prime Beth Orton. A few well-chosen covers pace out the set but it’s the originals that shine the brightest, whether ghostly sea shanty, wistful country lament or an utterly heartbreaking new song picked out on ukulele and delicate acoustic guitar. There’s new confidence in their faces at the set’s end, nerves visibly gone, and rightly so.
The David Tattersall you see on stage with the Wave Pictures is a strange chap. Essentially fronting that most self-effacing of beasts, an awkward, bookish indie-folk band, he never seems to betray a moment’s doubt, instead calm, deliberate and self-assured as he negotiates occasionally slightly clumsy couplets with unusual nonchalance. Tonight, though, is his second ever solo gig, and despite his ties to the city there’s a little nervousness in the air. Introducing the songs from new album ‘Happy For A While’ with a wry smile and admission of its downbeat nature, he stumbles over the opening verse of ‘Moorhens’ before starting again. It’s the last time he’ll look back. The pattern is familiar from his hyper-productive recent past, first-person paeans to mysterious girls where the hidden depth to the apparently meaningless is reinforced by repetition and emphasis on the simple things that mean the most. The solo acoustic accompaniment comes either slowed-down, soulful and ruminative or feverish, upbeat and clamorous like dear old Jonathan Richman taught us. Not unlike Sweet Baboo, he has a knack of being able to hold the attention of a room with a stare and a pithy phrase, and if ‘Happy For A While’ and tonight’s set contain few surprises they serve to remind us that it’s startlingly effective.
