Gig review: ELLES BAILEY- Islington Assembly Hall, London, 2 November 2024

One of the new generations of artists that has somehow managed largely to pass me by to date is Elles Bailey. I’d seen her name on tours and festival bills and social media, but never yet managed to see her live.

With her new album ‘Beneath The Neon Glow’ reaching the national top 20 recently this was the right time to assess for myself what all the fuss was about on her biggest UK solo tour yet, not least as this London date was at one of my favourite venues. The prestigious Assembly Hall played host to a respectable, if far from packed crowd.

There were two support bands with Demi Marriner given the honour of opening. She happens to be one of Elles Baileys ‘besties’ and a member of her band, but is a folk singer in her own right and played a quartet of very listenable songs in ‘Sins’, ‘Repeat Refrain’, ‘One Way Conversation’ and ‘Good Guy Act’. She was also a very personable raconteur with a story about a squirrel cook off while touring the Deep South having people in stitches. Less happily, she revealed Elles was still getting some much needed kip after feeling under the weather on the journey.

The main support were The Cinelli Brothers, namely Italians Marco and Alessandro, and their band, who have built quite a reputation either side of the pandemic in their adopted UK and of tonight’s three acts, the one I was most familiar with, having seen them a couple of times at the Eel Pie club in my suburban London neck of the woods.

They opened with ‘Prayer’ in a strongly gospel style with three band members sharing the vocals and ‘Leave It Up To You’, before a longer jam with a Latin flavour. Their versatility in swapping instruments depending on the songs is part of their charm but here made for a rather disjointed set. I remember Tom Julian-Jones playing quite a leading role on vocals and guitar when seeing them, but this time he was mainly restricted to the blues harp.

Meanwhile Marco (a dead ringer for the young George Michael with his shades and bouffant hair) swapped from piano to lead guitar only on the penultimate number ‘Save Me’, a Chicago style blues. There was then only time for a short and sharp ‘Mama Don’t Like You’ and though it was a good set, I felt a 30 minute snippet would not have shown them at their best to any new followers.

Elles Bailey, not showing any sign of her illness, at least superficially, came on stage in spangly silver jacket and shorts and matching boots, albeit devoid of the headgear she seems to sport on most of her promo photos.

‘Enjoy The Ride’ opened the set, given a southern feel with piano from Jonny Henderson, who was impressive throughout, and a closing slide guitar solo from Rob Wilkins. While associated with the blues scene, her style is very different from the guitar riff based blues rock that dominates the classic rock magazines and radio stations. Instead it draws richly on a variety of traditional American musical forms, from rock to folk, soul to country, with the briskly commercial ‘Leave The Light On’ in the latter category.

After the first of many introductions which confirmed Elles as an articulate talker and therefore ideally suited to her growing sideline as a radio show presenter, ‘Ballad Of A Broken Dream’ saw her take to piano with Jonny switching to organ and was a quality song, while ‘1972’ was swampy with a loose sound that successfully evoked that musical period.

A cover of John Martyn’s ‘Over The Hill’, with Jonny’s organ playing again prominent was followed by a country-ish ballad, ‘Silhouette In A Sunset’, and ‘Hell Or High Water’, one of the rockier numbers with Joe’s guitar work in particular redolent of Jon Bon Jovi’s ‘Blaze Of Glory’ album or Cinderella’s bluesier moments. ‘Hole In My Pocket’ had a Memphis soul feel while ‘Medicine Man’ was patently the older song that fans would not let her drop from a set over half of which was drawn from the new album.

Elles spoke of her pride as returning as headliner to a venue where she had seen Larkin Poe as a fan, and more recently supported Walter Trout, and it struck me the former are one of the closest musical reference points for her. Her voice was sultry and honeyed, but during another number with pure soul, ‘What’s The Matter With You’, she was sitting on a speaker stack on the edge of the crowd.

It was clear this was not just to get up close and personal, but she was clearly in some discomfort and eventually a stool was brought out. Though she got up from time to time to walk the stage gingerly, the effect was an unfortunate lack of continuity. However she was determined to see the show through, not least as sadly the mother of the recently departed Matt Long was in the crowd.

‘Truth Ain’t Gonna Save Us’ featured beautiful vocal harmonies with Demi, and as the set wore on I found myself really enjoying the subtle ensemble playing on songs like ‘Love Yourself’, ‘Let It Burn’, and ‘If This Is Love’, either side of ‘The Game’, a rocker reminding me of Kira Mac or other stalwarts of the NWOCR movement. But it was ‘Riding Out The Storm’, which had a great feel, especially in the closing guitar and organ solos, that really hit my own sweet spot.

There was a contrasting pair of encores though Elles warned us ‘Turn Off The News’ would be mournful and downbeat, before closing a generous hour and three quarter set with the soulful and uptempo ‘Sunshine City’, both Cinelli Brothers guesting to assist in some more fine band jamming, Marco’s boogie-woogie style piano in particular.

As my first time seeing her, I was not best placed to judge quite how much effect, if at all, her illness had on her performance. What I can say is that I was sufficiently impressed to become an instantly confirmed fan and to follow her more closely in future.

Review and Photos by Andy Nathan

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Frontiers [Release date 15.11.24]

Second album from Swedish Melodic Metal band, Starchaser.

The title track, ‘Into The Great Unknown’, a successful marriage of image and drama and music, gets us underway with a flourish.

(Actually the “image” comes from the spoken word prelude, ‘Stella Exodus”. We get the picture… an intrepid crew are escaping a war torn planet.)

It’s an outstanding track, bringing together all the band’s melodic metal strengths on a pulsing mix of the epic and the urgent. We’re off to a flier.

Starchaser was formed by Kenneth (Tad Morose) Jonsson, showing good judgement in his recruitment of expertise and experience: bassist Örjan Josefsson (Cibola Junction); drummer Johan Kulberg (Therion, Hammerfall); keyboardist Kay Backlund, ex Lions Share, and perhaps more especially, vocalist Ulrich Carlsson, ex Million.

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He leads ‘Battalion Of Heroes’ climactic chorus like a heavy metal hero himself.

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Review by Brian McGowan