{"id":47386,"date":"2015-06-25T12:15:16","date_gmt":"2015-06-25T12:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thejoycollective.co.uk\/blog\/?p=47386"},"modified":"2015-06-30T18:49:34","modified_gmt":"2015-06-30T18:49:34","slug":"james-blackshaw-gentle-good-toby-hay-10-feet-tall-cardiff-15-06-15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/preview\/james-blackshaw-gentle-good-toby-hay-10-feet-tall-cardiff-15-06-15\/","title":{"rendered":"James Blackshaw \/ The Gentle Good \/ Toby Hay : 10 Feet Tall, Cardiff : 15.06.15"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"JB\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no more than twenty in tonight, which is upsetting but strangely predictable \u2013 yeah, it\u2019s the Monday after a particularly hearty weekend of revelry in Cardiff, but it\u2019s a warm, summery evening ideally suited to the acoustic balm on offer. The Attic Folk team have used 10ft Tall\u2019s curious charms well, candlelit tables creating a cosy feel and masking the modest turnout effectively.\u00a0 You\u2019d actually want to come back, which isn\u2019t something I\u2019ve said about the place often.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Toby Hay hugs his guitar for dear life, face pressed to the frame and tousled Jack Rose hair draped across the strings.\u00a0 His most immediate pieces skip puppyishly in the footsteps of clear influences like Rose and John Fahey (whose \u2018Poor Boy Long Way From Home\u2019 he covers to appreciative nods from the ale-sipping enthusiasts).\u00a0 \u2018Red Kite\u2019, a Hay original, follows, bouncing nimbly on twanging Fahey-inspired rhythms and a sweet pealing melody, while elsewhere a crackling, droning raga intro and playful Richard Bishop-style Eastern tones dovetail beautifully into a rousing take on \u2018When The Saints Go Marching In\u2019. So far, so accomplished.\u00a0 The most interesting pieces are those where he finds his own voice, though; balladic 12-string compositions that meander reflectively through the mid-Wales landscapes of his home. Highly promising, he might well look back at these early steps in a couple of years and think them a bit na\u00efve. That\u2019s a good thing.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no better example of binding clear influences into an original voice than The Gentle Good, who continues, three albums in, to flit between styles and influences casually and entirely confidently.\u00a0 \u2018Hiraeth\u2019 opens with a reminder of the trad Welsh folk beauty he built a reputation on, but he scarcely revisits its forelock-tugging, respectful charms during forty minutes\u2019 zigzagging across styles and nations.\u00a0 \u2018Aubade\u2019 is crystalline Renbourn \/ Jansch keening, a newly-minted instrumental grabs a handful of Welsh motifs and casts them in sparkling new light, while \u2018Ocean is King\u2019 is a pin-sharp rush of pure spring.\u00a0 From there he diverts with a Welsh-Chinese hybrid from Y Bardd Anfarwol<\/i>,\u00a0debuts a new original which gently subverts the ‘lonely maiden waits on the shore’ clich\u00e9s beloved of songs he himself has covered, and finally wraps up with a stinging take of\u00a0the lurching, seasick\u00a0title track from Tethered To The Storm<\/em>. He never drops a single complex stitch; practiced, assured and captivating in ways few if any can match, a laid back cousin of Gruff Rhys if you squint.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Within the cosy confines of an evening like this, something fairly radical occurs ten minutes into James Blackshaw\u2019s set; he sings.\u00a0 Having stayed instrumental for his glorious set at From Now On in February, \u2018Running Out Of Air\u2019 from Summoning Suns<\/i> debuts his voice to Cardiff ears, his vocals a little hesitant but warm and clean with shades of Neil Halstead or even Damon Gough and a pleasing hint of Jim O\u2019Rourke\u2019s off-kilter phrasing.\u00a0 His playing on the trio of vocal songs is more streamlined, clearer, with countryish slide guitar; you sense changes in his writing to accommodate lyrics which long-time dual perfomers like Gareth Bonello have long since merged into one natural style. Next to the transcendent sunburst wonder of \u2018River of Heaven\u2019 or \u2018Transient Life In Twilight\u2019, both a decade old but still blessed with a breath-catching beauty, these new songs may seem a little earthbound.\u00a0 They\u2019re not; he’s just trying on a different set of stylistic structures.\u00a0 As with his writing for piano, for ensemble (the Fantomas<\/i> album), or for improv duo (with Lubomir Melnyk), it\u2019s just further evidence that Blackshaw, for all his abundant talents as a guitarist, has far more to him than your standard casual, self-effacing genre classics.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

James Blackshaw photographed at From Now On festival by Joe Singh (www.snaprockandpop.co.uk)<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s no more than twenty in tonight, which is upsetting but strangely predictable \u2013 yeah, it\u2019s the Monday after a particularly hearty weekend of revelry in Cardiff, but it\u2019s a warm, summery evening ideally suited to the acoustic balm on offer. The Attic Folk team have used 10ft Tall\u2019s curious charms well, candlelit tables creating […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":47442,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[458,459],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-preview","category-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonnyjaniero.com\/thejoycollective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}