As I sit and start to write this, it’s 24 hours since I was watching
Stornoway play for the fifth time this year, at Nottingham’s
Rescue Rooms. Weather permitting, I’m tempted to go and see them again
this week. (Spoiler: I went, of course I did.) I’ve not been to many gigs
since covid, for various reasons, and at the moment it feels that there aren’t
many bands that could keep getting me out of the house. Stornoway,
however, are so very special to me and I have had the best time following them
around over the past few months. It’s been a genuinely really inspiring ride,
and I feel motivated to write a little self-indulgent ramble, so here goes.
This has been a generally shitty year for me, and like it so often does, music
helps. In recent years, I’ve found a deeper love for nature and wildlife,
especially birds. For a while, it felt that I’d replaced loud, busy, crowded
gigs for open green spaces, swapped music for birdsong. It doesn’t have to be
either or, though. Like a couple of other artists I love (hello
Cosmo Sheldrake and Johnny Flynn) Stornoway bring
together these joint loves in a truly beautiful way. A love of nature, a
passion for environmentalism and brilliant music - an irresistible
combination. Getting to see Stornoway perform a few times recently has
been a real highlight of a miserable year. One of the gigs was even at a
wetland centre: the absolute dream.
Now let’s rewind. I can’t claim to have been around from the start (their
gorgeous debut album came out in 2010) - in fact, I stumbled across the band a
little by accident, meeting bassist Oli at a Sofar Sounds show in
Oxford in 2014. I’d only been living in Oxford for a couple of months, and
while I’d been to a few gigs, joining the Sofar crew was the best introduction
to the local scene that I could’ve had. I had been an admirer of the Sofar
videos on Youtube for a while at this point, and was really excited to get the
opportunity to volunteer as a photographer for the Oxford shows.
I had a camera and plenty of enthusiasm, but not much experience of taking
photos at gigs, and I was certainly learning ‘on the job’, but I loved my time
at Sofar - I met so many cool people (volunteers, gig-goers and artists alike)
and got to attend gigs and take photos in some interesting places, many of
which I’d likely never have visited otherwise. The first of these shows was at
the Worcester College Common Room. Classic Oxford. Oli set up the
Oxford branch of Sofar, so we met at the show, and I remember finding him on
Facebook afterwards, and noticing that he was in a band, a band which seemed
to have a lot of likes… I quickly realised that they were basically Oxford
music royalty and started to listen.
The first time that I got the opportunity to see Stornoway perform was
on Record Store Day at Truck Store on Oxford’s famous Cowley
Road, in the release week of their album Bonxie. An origami bird (I
still have it in the CD case) guaranteed me entry as I’d bought the album
beforehand, but I was late as I’d headed into town after an early morning RSD
shopping. It was so so busy (perhaps I’d underestimated how much Oxford loved
them) that I literally had to squeeze in to the doorway and couldn’t see a
thing as there was a wall between me and the stage. I might not have seen
much, but it sounded glorious.
A few days later, I took a train to Reading with a flatmate to see them play a
‘proper’ gig at Sub89. There was birdsong playing in the venue between
sets, which at the time I would probably have thought was a bit quirky, but
would now appreciate as a superb artistic choice. More birdsong, always. I
remember being completely transfixed by the ‘unplucked’ Josephine and
watching my recording of it over and over afterwards.
They played a few acoustic shows later in the year, promoting their new Bonxie
Unplucked EP, on which sits their now classic (thanks to the Co-op) The Only
Way Is Up cover. Oli got me a photo pass for the Oxford show, and I felt like the coolest person
wandering around the church with my camera. I remember avoiding an essay or
something similarly important to go to the gig - but it was definitely worth
it. They played a beautiful show (and Charlie Cunningham supported!) and I was
happy with my photos, and I was certainly starting to really fall for the
band.
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| Stornoway performing at on the Bonxie Unplucked tour |
At the start of 2016, I was doing a placement module on the English Literature
side of my degree, and the opportunity to work with Oli and Tom (a member of
the extended Storno live band) came up. Probably a fairly tenuous link to
English Literature when most of my fellow students were working at publishing
houses and newspapers, but my lecturer seemed fine with it, and suddenly I was
entering the world of live music promotion. As part of the placement I put on
my first ever gig, and people actually came to it! The placement went well and I worked with them as community manager for a while (both at university and after graduating), avoiding some of the responsbilities of my degree while working the
door for multiple gigs a week across Oxford and often going to other shows in
between.
Later that year, just before the public announcement, Oli emailed me one
morning to let me know that Stornoway would soon “be no more”. Compared to
some, I hadn’t been around as a fan for long, but I loved the band and was sad
for my friends, as I knew how much they loved playing together. It wasn’t
meant to be a hiatus or a break, they were all moving on to other projects, to
other lines of work, to other countries. The finality of it made it tough
news, but a farewell tour was on the horizon, which promised to be a
celebration of the band.
The farewell tour happened in March 2017 and was a complete triumph - it
seemed that they really were bowing out at the top of their game, with adoring
fans left begging for more. Better than fading into the background, surely. I saw them play in London (and got the tea towel)
and a couple of days later in Oxford at the final date of the tour. I got to
hang around for most of the day (at Oxford’s New Theatre, no less) as we were
promoting the show: I watched the soundcheck, had a wander backstage, watched
the show, watched as fans said their hellos and goodbyes at the merch stand,
and went to the after party with the best of the best of Oxford’s music scene.
I never really made tons of friends at university, but the local scene was
really welcoming, and Stornoway were always an integral part of it. At the end
of the party, I shared a taxi with Oli & Rob’s parents as my halls of
residence were close to their house. I remember sitting in the kitchen until
the light switched off automatically and just having a cry that something so
special was over. Stor-no-more.
I was still working with Oli and Tom at the time, and I’ve kept in touch with
them beyond, and knew that the band still occasionally played together at
private events, but I had no inkling that a reunion might be on the cards.
Last year brought a couple of festival appearances that I couldn’t get to, and
it felt a little bittersweet to know that they were playing but that I
couldn’t see them. The shows were a sort of extension of the farewell tour,
promoting the live album that they’d released from the Oxford show. (Aside: if
you have this CD, my photo of the soundcheck is behind the CD in the case!)
Little did we know that they’d actually been recording a new album at this
point, in sheds around the country (where the best albums are made, of course)
and that they’d soon be back. Properly. Who could’ve dared to hope for such a
scenario?!
The band getting back together and announcing a new album was the best news to
kick off Spring this year. I missed out on tickets to their comeback London
gig (big sad) but soon the gig and festival announcements started to come
thick and fast. I was reunited, physically and musically, with Stornoway at
Cambridge Folk Festival in July. It was magnificent. I wrote about it here. The band were so so great, the crowd loved it, and I got to meet one of my
favourite authors before their set. Truly the stuff of dreams.
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| Reuniting with Stornoway at Cambridge Folk Festival |
It’s been a bit of a whirlwind few weeks since then around the album release -
the band invited me along to see an intimate album launch celebration at WWT’s
London Wetland Centre in Barnes in September. It was definitely one of the
coolest places I’ve seen a gig, as the band performed with the backdrop of the
wetland behind them. Getting to birdwatch while listening to one of my
favourite bands was a fairly magical experience. Parakeets were determined to
feature on every song, and I saw a jay fly past at one point during the set.
Lapwings out on the water too, I think!
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| Stornoway performing at WWT London Wetland Centre |
They brought out Yijia and Fyfe Dangerfield to sing the songs they’d
collaborated with them on, and were interviewed about the record afterwards by
another collaborator (and all round musical/environmental hero) Sam Lee. I
stuck around after the main event, and got to go out into the reeds and watch
Brian and Fyfe performing Anwen a couple more times for the video below.
Easier said than done, as we were directly under the shared flightpath of
airplanes and birds, and while the video looks gloriously sunny, the sky was
the deepest grey behind us, and the heavens opened just after this video.
After helping to load the van back up (transferrable skills from working in a
bookstore and carrying big ol’ piles of books all day every day) I caught a
lift with the band back to Hammersmith, and felt pretty sure this wasn’t the
last I’d be seeing them…
Of course I couldn’t resist going to see them at Rough Trade East
a couple of days later for an instore performance - a very different setting
(let’s just say that I’ll take a nature reserve over the rubbish lined streets
of Brick Lane any day) but they were ever so brilliant. Before I knew it, I
was going to a last minute show at Banquet Records a week or two later, on the
day of the album being released. It’s a bit of a trek down to Kingston but so
worth it to see them play in such an intimate setting, and to celebrate album
launch day with Brian and Jon.
A few weeks (and many many listens of the album) later I took my dad along to
see them (well, he drove me) at Nottingham’s Rescue Rooms. This is where I
first saw The Hoosiers back in May 2011 (my first gig in a proper music venue)
and it now holds even more special memories for me. Yijia opened the show with
a mesmerising set and then it was time for Storno… A full band, a
mind-boggling array of instruments (including: a saw, multiple trowels, a
bucket of Welsh gravel, a melodica…), a setlist travelling through each of
their albums, Low Island’s Felix playing an absolute blinder on drums,
unplugged tracks. It had all the ingredients to be one of my favourite ever
gigs (it was) and then they went and played one of my favourite songs,
dedicated to me. Fairly sure I cried.
I discovered their track Boom Went The Bittern last year through a live video
on Youtube from several years ago. There’s a chance I’ve heard it live before,
but it has become a bit of a soundtrack of my walks in the past year or so.
I’ve been slyly nudging the band to play it since Folk Fest, and on Sunday,
they conceded to my badgering - it was one of the best moments of a gig ever
for me, no lie.
If I was sensible, that should probably have been it, but I adored the Nottingham gig so much
that I had to try and get along to another show. On Wednesday, I took two
trains there and back to Cambridge, straight after a busy shift at work, and
rounded off my little season of Stornoway with another beautiful show. Complete with a little bit of crowdsurfing from Oli and one of my favourite gig photos ever.
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| Oli crowd-surfing during Zorbing in Cambridge |
So that’s that! It’s been an absolute treat to get to see Stornoway over the
past few weeks - in various venues, with different line-ups, different songs. Following them around has given me a little of that gig-going confidence back,
and I squeezed in a few other shows in between theirs, with a few in my
calendar that I’m hoping to get to before the year is out - looking at you
Johnny Flynn, BE GOOD, Chartreuse, Bear’s Den…
At each Stornoway gig I've been to by myself lately, I've connected with people in the queue or at the barrier. They've had a little of the magic of those Sofar gigs, providing the opportunity to chat to like-minded folk who are into nature and music. Stornoway fans are a lovely bunch. The band, it goes without saying, are wonderful humans too. They're touring again in February (you should go) and I'm hoping to make it to a show or two then.
For now: I love you, Stornoway. I am so so glad that you're back, and I'm certainly not the only one. The world, my world, is better for having Stornoway in it.
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