Matthew Henry John Bartlett

My best friend Simon bought me (and two others) tickets to Turin Brakes. We went and saw them on Saturday evening at Indigo. Sleepers Union played before them.

Sleepers Union sounded to me like Grandaddy turned up a notch, with a tone-deaf vocalist or three. Reasonably pleasant solid textures, quite structured songs. A little boring – (we will play this riff for eight bars, now we will play this one). After their last song all the gear was cleared off the stage and replaced with a keyboard and two acoustic guitars. This made me a little worried – how will I enjoy this without a flash drummer to watch? My worries were unfounded. They were fantastic. Two amazing guitarists and one amazing keyboard player. Usually when I know the words to a song a band is playing, I sing along, but their voices were so rich and their harmonies were so tight that I didn’t dare dilute them with my own. They pulled the nicest sounds out of their guitars. The keyboard player was a consummate musician also, backing up the guitars with piano, Rhodes and strings.