Buzzin Music Blog

James Yorkston – Live at the Bullingdon Arms, Oxford, 21/11/08

James Yorkston

James Yorkston is out on tour, playing live in small venues across the country. This Friday, he played to a fairly small crowd in Oxford in the dingy back room of a modern pub, The Bullingdon Arms.

The stage, only a step higher than the floor and more like something you’d expect to see half-rate comedians take to than to hear the emotional power of James Yorkston’s folk songs from, creaks incessantly throughout the gig.

James Yorkston is solo this evening without the support of his band the Athletes, and so his songs are raw and stripped-back. This is better for songs like ‘Tortoise Regrets Hare’, where he is joined only by the two support artists, Rozi Plain and Pictish Trail on vocals, and not by the largely detrimental orchestration of the released single.

Other songs, such as ‘B’s Jig’ and ‘Temptation’, both from When The Haar Rolls In, hold the crowd in awe despite their length. It is not so much guitar or delivery that is doing this either, but rather the desire to pick out all of Yorkston’s vivid, melancholy, violently emotional stories.

And James Yorkston is definitely the storyteller. During the song ‘When The Haar Rolls In’, he sings in the fourth verse ‘and the music you swore by it was nothing it was terrible’ only to break off to tell us how that music really was terrible, but how he couldn’t say anything as he was staying with the people who were playing it that evening.

He oozes comfort and confidence on stage. When the guitar sound goes during one song he stops, makes an aside, and wastes no time by launching into a Scottish traditional folk song ‘Blue Bleesin’ Bind Drunk’ (on recording by Sheila Stewart) and then joins in with the guitar once it comes back on.

The appreciation of the crowd for James Yorkston’s manner is evident, though it is a crowd I rather mistrust. There are the bearded and balding; then there is the lone woman at the front, swaying her arms and body with her eyes shut in a kind of far-off, airy manner; and finally, the woman who shushes me for talking halfway through.

James Yorkston’s live gigs are without doubt a hugely moving experience, and whatever the crowd, the music, particularly the songs from the new album When The Haar Rolls In, are absolutely outstanding, particularly solo. I would also hugely recommend checking out the two support artists Rozi Plain and Picitsh Trail, both members of the Fence Collective, and of whom Rozi Plain particularly wowed me.

James Yorkston will be playing live in the following places:

November 24th – Swindon Vic
November 25th – Derby Royal
November 26th – Newcastle Sage
November 27th – Aberdeen Camelite Hotel
November 29th – Glasgow Stereo
December 11th – London St Giles Church