Barefoot Dance Of The Sea must be Cardiff’s most easily talked over band. Their mixture of acapella vocals and barely there piano and acoustic guitar is quieter than most wakes. So who’s this yapping at the back? Why, it’s Entertainingly Drunk Guitarist From Tickley Feather, who before the gig was asking for directions to “the nearest news-stand” to purchase booze, and whose merryness will crop up later. He gets politely asked to shut up, and the Sea rings out again: clear eyed, gentle shanties and folk songs, underpinned by cello and handclaps, heavy on the harmonies and breathing space. A little too reliant on the standards, but these three ladies still conjure repeated, beautiful spells.
Into the realm of the almost-adult, where fringes hang long, instruments mysteriously fall apart and between song banter is mumbled and faux-naif. Let me point out now that Grand Pocket Orchestra are completely top drawer tonight, the band of the evening, despite their affectations: rabid, compressed epics of excitable yelping, mid-song instrument swapping and toy-like keyboard abuse. If the speed twee of someone like Cats In Paris isn’t, well, speedy enough for you, point your lugholes at these Irish tykes. 90 degree turns every 90 seconds, like being attacked by wonky Skittles. Tasty!
That 10cm tall woman crouching at the front for Grand Pocket Orchestra’s last song? That’ll be Tickley Feather then, barely taller than the keyboard stand she’s stood behind. It’s kind of weird, the music of the headline set: although flanked by a Sleeperbloke on extra keyboard, and Yer Drunk Guy on guitar, they don’t seem to do much, adding only subtle scrapings to the already hardly formed sketches. Songs emerge from Annie Sachs’s console, ethereal but weirdly propulsive, vocals get gently but insistently added on top, then vanish into the air. Insubstantial and beguiling, you’d be hypnotised if they weren’t clearly pissed, with axeman taking the honours, rambling about Paris and the Simpsons, ending up banned from the mic. The infamous Buffalo sign should be changed to ‘WHAT THE HECK’ apparently. I agree, fool.
