I See A Darkness

The first support act for Bonnie 'Prince' Billy at the Queen Elizabeth Hall were a British three-piece called ...Bender. I'd never heard of them, but checking up later they've been around for years and have been churning out albums as well, God help us. They were one of the most pointless bands I've ever seen. They seemed to think looking moody and making some fuzzy guitar noises was somehow acceptable in 2007. I would have been ashamed to be churning this stuff out 30 years ago.

Next up was Dawn McCarthy, singer from Faun Fables, she had a pleasant enough voice, but her delivery was amateurish in the extreme, not just naively unpolished, but downright sloppy. Her songs didn't have enough of a melody to hold your attention for more than a few seconds, and the lyrics seemed wholly inconsequential. She sings back-up on most of Billy's new album, and she came back later and acquitted herself perfectly well singing those tunes, but as a solo artiste, just didn't hack it.

The Bonnie 'Prince' himself was in very good humour, exchanging banter with the keyboard player, do his funny little one-legged jigs and generally seeming to be having a great time. He played a wide-ranging set , with a fair amount of the new album which I've been listening to a lot. His voice is quite slight, if charming, and sometimes he can hardly seem to be there, he's so under-stated. The band were good in a country rock, Crazy Horse-lite kind of way. I found it odd that they came back for an encore, and played for another half an hour, and by the end I was ready to hit the road.