october, 2017
Event Details
English Songwriter Ralegh Long released his debut album "Hoverance" to critical acclaim in 2015. This album of "spooky pastoralism" and its follow-up E.P "We Are in the Fields" (2016) won
Event Details
English Songwriter Ralegh Long released his debut album “Hoverance” to critical acclaim in 2015. This album of “spooky pastoralism” and its follow-up E.P “We Are in the Fields” (2016) won praise from The Guardian, for their “twilit ambience and demented beauty” and from Sky Arts as “calling to mind the atmosphere of Nick Drake”.Tracks received radio play from BBC6 Music presenters Lauren Laverne, Guy Garvey and Gideon Coe. To date, Long has over 2 million plays on Spotify.
His second full-length album, “Upwards of Summer” (Make It New Records / Kartel Music Group 2017) marks a change of pace. It is an album that very nearly didn’t happen at all. At the end of 2016, worn out and disillusioned, Long found himself wondering whether he would continue making music. Instead, he tackled the burn-out by writing, “remembering what it what it felt like to pick up a guitar for the first time, and tapping into that place of instinct”. He then took these songs into the studio with his touring band and producer Margo Broom (Fat White Family, Phobophobes, Goat Girl) for a one-week stint – a liberating process he credits with “healing [his] relationship with music.” Long says, “I didn’t doubt, I didn’t second guess, I just trusted myself and I trusted those around me.’ The resulting album is a revelation. The piano, strings and woodwind of his debut are nowhere to be seen, exchanged for a jangle of chorus guitars and anthemic hooks that make up a thrillingly confident return – a powerful set of songs exploring the binaries of frustration and excitement, youth and age, restlessness and homesickness.
“He seems incapable of sitting at a piano and coming up with anything that doesn’t tremble with almost mystical longing … you’ll be reminded variously of Nilsson, early Todd Rundgren, even Alex Chilton at his most overwrought and wracked.” The Guardian
“A great song” Elton John
“Sad, spooky pastoralism of Bill Fay or Nick Drake are touchstones on songs laden with rural imagery and dexterous melody.” Mojo 4*s
“Really, really beautiful”. Lauren Laverne, BBC6 Music
Time
(Thursday) 7:30 pm - 11:00 pm
Location
Upstairs
Price
adv £8