Last night kicked off a great week of gigs (Jack Savoretti in London tomorrow night, pretty excited about that one!) It was another brilliant Sofar Sounds concert at The Handle Bar (a cafe above a bike shop), an alumni show so no film crew and a really lovely relaxed atmosphere, a great crowd and a beautiful line-up with Boat To Row, Ags Connolly, Kyan and Little Brother Eli performing for us.
First up we had Boat To Row who are a band from Birmingham currently do a house show tour so Sofar fits in pretty well alongside those shows! I met the lead singer Michael a few months back when he played a solo support set for a Tigmus show in Oxford, and it was lovely to catch them playing as a band, perhaps next time I'll see them playing a full (less stripped back) set... slowly building up to that! They treat us to some tunes from their 2015 record I Found You Here including one of my favourites, Handsome Beats, which you can watch the video for below.
Next up and from somewhere a little more local, country singer Ags Connolly played some sad songs for us - who doesn't love sad songs?! We were promised a happier song and you might be able to work out why the track in the video below got some laughs...
Up next was Kyan, probably one of my favourite recent Sofar discoveries in the sense that I was pleasantly surprised by the set... particularly with the addition of violinist Jed, who he'd only known for a couple of weeks! He's recently smashed the target on his Kickstarter project for the recording of his latest set of songs, which you can read about here. He's no stranger to Sofar and is currently touring around playing loads of them, here's a video from a Sofar London show a year or so ago (no violin but there are halloween decorations!)
Last up and also no strangers to Sofar Sounds, counting this as their eighteenth show, locals Little Brother Eli played us a couple of tracks from their brilliant debut Cold Tales as well as some brand new tracks they've been working on. It's been a few months since I last saw them playing their superb headline gig for Tigmus (where I was in charge of merch from an ironing board) so it was lovely to see them again - they're back in Oxford on the 19th May to headline the O2 for BBC Introducing alongside a brilliant line-up with Lucy Leave, Harry Pane, Ghost in the Photographs and Sleepers' Dome (FB event here). There are naturally quite a few videos of them performing at past Sofar shows on Youtube, here's one of my favourites...
I took care of the social media for the show last night, so if you fancy checking out some live videos of each of the acts you can head over to the Facebook page here! If you want to find out more about Sofar Sounds and sign up for a monthly email alert about upcoming gigs (there is very likely one near you, wherever you live worldwide) check out their website here... long may Sofar continue!
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