music makes me wonder: stornoway LIVE

who: stornoway (joined by the north sea radio orchestra)
when: 9 july 2011
where: somerset house, london, uk
support: cloud control (australia)

when people asked me why i´m going to london for the weekend, i refused to tell them the reason. why? because once i told anyone that i was going to london to see jamie cullum and stornoway, they all usually went like "what? who are they?" since this is the common response i get in germany, i was very much looking forward to those gigs in the uk. at least a few more people would know them over there.

my 3rd stornoway experience this year maybe requires some sort of background information for anyone who doesn´t know how and when they caught my attention. here we go:

quit my job at the hilton hotel in february. moved back in with my parents. looked for concerts going on in march and april before moving out again for uni in may. came across stornoway. knew nothing about them. ignored them. forgot about them. checked the webiste for gigs again, a few days later. didn´t find anything exciting. came across stornoway again (of course). thought i might as well check them out. watched the videos for "i saw you blink", "zorbing" and "watching birds" on youtube. wasn´t quite convinced. "i saw you blink" got me hooked nevertheless. tried to find some background info on them. saw that jon studied russian. i studied russian in high school for 4 years. first really good impression (as weird as that may sound). kept listening to those three songs on repeat. kinda liked what i heard over time. decided to get tickets to see them in berlin. ordered the album online. got the album about two weeks prior to the gig. actually really liked what i heard then. bought tickets to see them in cologne with my friend amy. she had no clue who stornoway were. finally saw them in berlin, not knowing many lyrics. was very impressed. thank god. knew all the lyrics for the cologne gig a few days later. decided to go to london in july.

good thing i didn´t say it would be a short summary...

  

after walking around town on our second day in london, we (again, my friend amy and i) got to the venue, somerset house, around 3 pm which was, of course, way too early but we didn´t really care. so we wandered around the venue a little and up and down the street before starting to queue - as the first people there. we saw the guys setting everything up on stage before the venue pretty much closed for the public and they could do their soundcheck (which already sounded promising except that the famous trumpet was missing during "zorbing"). by that time, there were already quite a few people in line with us. actually two british (!) girls tried to cut in front of us by just sitting around the corner as to where the queue was supposed to start (we actually asked one of the security guys before where the queue would start later; those girls obviously didn´t know or pretended that they didn´t know). when the security guys finally asked us all to step back a little, i kindly asked those two girls to get the hell behind us. sorry, but first of all i thought we were in the uk where people usually know how to queue properly (unlike the people in germany) and second of all, i´m not getting to the venue so early, just to let other people steal our first place in the queue. try that with someone else but not with me. 

 waiting in the queue

when the gates finally opened around 7.45 pm, amy and i made our way to the front, getting right to the spot where we wanted to be (after two previous stornoway gigs, i knew where i wanted us to be). opening for stornoway were cloud control, a band from australia who has supported stornoway before. as a support act, you don´t get to play too much but the stuff they actually played was rather good. didn´t know who they were or what kind of music they usually play, so their whole set was something new for me. of course they couldn´t play their set without at least one technical hitch (maybe that´s the curse of playing a gig with stornoway?). when the singer was trying to fix his guitar, the guy who plays bass for cloud control, tried to entertain the audience - with big success i guess. he told us that his view from the stage was beautiful. apparently it looked just like australia... except that everyone was better looking. not quite sure if he was serious about this but nobody cared. it made everyone laugh anyway. the guitar finally got fixed and they played the rest of their set. all in all, their sound is quite impressive, very easy to listen to. plus they all seemed to be really nice which is always good if you´re trying to get new fans. 

  cloud control

i honestly do not remember when stornoway actually came out but i do know that it seemed to take ages to get them up on stage (it´s always nerve-wracking to wait for the main act once the support act is done with their set). they eventually came on and kicked their show off with one of my favourites - "boats and trains". i´ve loved this song ever since i first listened to their album. it got even better when they continued with my all time favourite "i saw you blink". that´s simply the song that really got me hooked on them and that´s why it´ll always be the ultimate highlight for me. plus it was absolutely amazing to hear the audience sing along to this song. of course the audience was a lot bigger (3000 people) than the ones in berlin and cologne, so you couldn´t really compare them anyway, but it was just great that everyone knew the lyrics and sang along. awesome feeling, amazing moment. 

3000 people waiting for stornoway

up next was "beachcomber´s windowsill", the title track of the first stornoway album, which actually didn´t even make it on the album in the end. it´s another up-beat number and really good to dance to. i like this song, so it´s always nice to hear it live. "beachcomber´s windowsill" was followed by the first new song of the night - "farewell appalachia!" they were joined by a lady from the north sea radio orchestra. she gave the song a nice twist since there´s usually no female voice. i expected it to sound great but they definitely exceeded my expectations. i certainly hope this song will make it on the next record.

"farewell appalachia!"

"we are the battery human" was up next - a song that they played unplugged in berlin and cologne. "battery human" always seems to be everyone´s favourite (maybe it´s simply because they´re all singing this song together?!), no matter where stornoway play a gig. obviously i´ve only heard it as an unplugged version before, so it was great to hear it live in "full" for the first time. "when you touch down from outer space" (the famous one about aliens in oxfordshire), another non-album track, has got to be my secret stornoway favourite. why? no idea. everytime i listen to the audio of that song from the berlin gig, it puts me in a good mood. brian ironically asked us to sing along in london and obviously people knew the lyrics, unlike the audience in germany. 

 jonathan quin

after "when you touch down from outer space" came the absolutely amazing "fuel up", a song that wasn´t on my "love"-list at the beginning but everyone on facebook seemed to worship this song, or more the lyrics actually. so i took a closer look at them. it´s one of the stornoway songs that´s on repeat ever since. another song that i began to love over time is "watching birds". not on my "love"-list at first either, every single time i listen to that song now, i have to think of the video - rob totally losing himself on the drums (gorgeous tie by the way) and jon as the announcer for the brian - oli fight. absolutely amazing. i´m sure the audio of this performance will be my most-played song on itunes very soon because it was definitely one of my highlights from somerset. and i´m sure adam and his trumpet are the most important reason why that will be the case soon.

 

"watching birds"

when everyone except brian left the stage, i expected him to sing "november song" (which is actually a great song that lets brian´s voice shine a lot). but he actually played a new song called "the bigger picture". i know he played it on their recent tour through north america a few weeks back, but i´m sure it was new for most of us. and judging by the response he got, everyone seemed to love it. afterwards stornoway were joined by the north sea radio orchestra again for "coldharbour road", the first song i fell in love with when i listened to their album. especially the ending makes this song so unique.

oli steadman

"here comes the blackout...!" is probably the most underrated song ever. i can´t really find any appropriate words to describe the brilliance of that song. it´s a shame that it´s so short. for all i care, they could play it ten times in a row and i wouldn´t lose interest in it at any point.

up next were "to the end of the movie" and "on the rocks" - two songs that sound absolutely stunning live. especially "on the rocks" is live so much better than on the record and i always thought it would be the other way around (that´s at least the case with so many other artists out there nowadays), but stornoway certainly proved me wrong.

 rob steadman

"on the rocks" seemed to be their last song but of course everyone expected them to come back, especially since they didn´t play "zorbing" up until then.

now is probably the right time to mention brian´s outfit that night. i´m a 100% positive that every single person in the audience had a smile on their face when brian came on stage wearing this gorgeous suit that was obviously from another decade. maybe he stole it from his grandpa? who knows. i  honestly didn´t even care. it was great. and thanks a lot to brian for not wearing those white pants again - spared me the act of screaming and embarrassing myself in the first row.

  brian briggs

a lot of people who went to a stornoway gig before probably already noticed that it simply wouldn´t be a stornoway show without some sort of technical error (as mentioned before). after some ghosts in cologne, i actually expected something to go wrong in london as well. and there we were, waiting for the encore, the band ready on the side of the stage, oli already picking up his double bass and the sound failed. but the wait was definitely worth it. brian, jon, oli and rob all gathered around one single microphone with brian on guitar and oli on double bass, the north sea radio orchestra in the background. the song, "the ones we hurt the most", was (according to brian) especially arranged for the somerset house gig which made it even more special for us. brian began playing his guitar only to stop after a few seconds, saying "i am completely and solely guilty for that fuck-up!". no one cared, it sounded great nevertheless. so they started from the beginning and played probably the most touching and emotional song ever (nice co-incidence that my ipod just switched to that song). after hearing "battery human" for the first time, i was always waiting for them to sing another song together. i´m usually not that emotional in terms of crying when it comes to  music but i have to admit, i had tears in my eyes that night and when i watched my recording of that song when i got back home on sunday, i actually started crying. getting goose bumps is just not enough with that song. their voices just go together so perfectly, it´s unbelievable (although i surely think jon should record a song by himself one day). like i said, i took a video of "the ones we hurt the most" but i´m keeping that to myself and won´t post it here. if you´re interested, i know there is another recording up on youtube.

 stornoway during "the ones we hurt the most"

second to last was "long distance lullaby" with the famous church bell at the beginning. i especially like the chorus here. although you gotta admit that you can´t shake the feeling that something´s missing in that song. don´t know what it is but will let you know once i figured it out.

stornoway ended their gig with the anxiously awaited "zorbing". the most special thing about this song? adam´s trumpet for sure. i absolutely love it. once adam joined in with his trumpet and suzie and rahul with their violins, they definitely had the audience on their side. it was f**king amazing! the perfect song to end this gig with...

 final song: "zorbing"

 adam briggs 

thank you stornoway, you made the second night in london a very special one! thanks to oli and brian for the chat afterwards, thanks to them all for signing our photos and special thanks to oli for taking the pics with us. we really appreciated it. hopefully see you again soon some time later this year...

 stornoway at somerset house

follow stornoway here:

website: www.stornoway.eu 

facebook: here

twitter (@theoldblindman): here

*video credits: both on youtube

- "farewell appalachia!": alond2n

- "watching birds" & "zorbing": dawnb0123

* picture credits: 

- picture 5 by chris slade (who posted this on twitter)

- pictures 2, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12 by amy spranger

- pictures 1, 3, 4, 8, 9, 12, 14 by me

*thanks to oli from stornoway for posting the setlist on twitter