ben howard. live.

who: ben howard

when: 20 october 2011

where: the ruby lounge, manchester, uk

support: lucy rose 

with pretty much every single uk date of his current “every kingdom” tour being sold out, ben howard stopped in manchester last friday to play at the ruby lounge. after seeing him at the haldern pop festival in august, i knew we were in for a treat.

up first was lucy rose. she was accompanied by a young man on electric guitar, herself playing the acoustic guitar. lucy just finished off a tour with bombay bicycle club (bbc) the night before. lucky me as i got to see her two weeks ago at the o2 apollo with bbc. most of the time her voice was drowned out by the sound at the bbc gig, so i was eager to see her again.

i wasn´t familiar with her music at all but she delivered a beautiful 7-track long set that left me impressed. lucy´s fragile voice goes perfectly with the clear guitar sound. the audience didn´t seem to appreciate her as much though as a lot of people kept talking throughout her entire set which makes me wonder if she was being ironic when she said: “thanks for listening. that´s really nice.”either way, her set included songs like “shiver” and her new single “scar”. by the end, lucy certainly got the crowd screaming as a part of her last song. all in all, well done.

 lucy rose

when ben howard and his band mates, chris bond and india bourne, finally entered the stage, every person in the room suddenly seemed to realize that this is in fact a concert which means that the audience generally focuses on the act up on stage instead of talking.

usually bands start with a more or less fast song to “wake up” the crowd, ben howard however began his set with the wonderful “depth over distance”. judging by the fact that a lot of people knew the lyrics, i reckon quite a few people in there saw him perform before or at least have known his music a lot longer than me.

the sing-along continued as ben played all-time favourites “old pine”, “keep your head up”, “the fear” and of course his crowd pleaser number one “the wolves”. the energy that the audience, and of course ben and his band, put into these songs, was impressive.

as previously mentioned in the “every kingdom” album review, some songs are just made for the stage while other ones sound better on record – simply because of the instruments they use on stage. they already have a lot more instruments than people on stage but it´s just not possible to catch the energy of a song like “the fear” live. this song is so intense in the way the instruments build up this growing tension towards the end, that it just doesn´t work as good on stage. i have to admit though that “the fear” probably is pretty much the only exception. other songs like “gracious” sound wonderful live which really surprised me because i´m not so keen on the album version. and of course “black flies” – there are no words to describe how wonderful this song is, especially live.

not to forget ben´s amazing band, chris bond on bass, double bass and drums and india bourne on cello and bass. sometimes i think a ben howard song would sound only half as good if it weren´t for their backing vocals. not sure what it is about them but they give ben´s music the last twist on the way to perfection.

the concert ended with a 2-track encore – “bones” and what seemed like the audience´s favourite “move like you want” (a song that has basically no meaning according to ben). there was definitely some serious singing going on during the last track.

the show basically included almost everything you would expect from a (good) concert: a bunch of talented musicians on stage who certainly knew how to make their instruments sound good, a range of beautiful voices, at least one phone going off during a slow song (which was “bones” in this case), several marriage proposals during the show (for india and ben), seriously interested people who needed to shush other people who would just not shut up, slightly drunk girls in the front row who were piling their 6 empty glasses up on stage and of course a main act who seemed to be truly thankful for all the support. see you in february, ben!

setlist from the gig at the ruby lounge:

- depth over distance

- diamonds

- old pine

- under the same sun

- further away

- gracious

- the fear

- black flies

- keep your head up

- the wolves

encore

- bones 

- move like you want

ben howard

chris bond

 india bourne

 ben howard