Pottery, Future Yard

Future Yard, Day 2

Another gorgeous day in beautiful downtown Birkenhead, and another amazing roster of performers!

Today’s top picks, for me, were...

Amaroun - London-based recovering Emo, occupying the sweet-spot between Erykah Badu and Feist.

Nilüfer Yanya - I admire anyone who turns-down an invitation to be in a girl-band in order to develop her own blend of guitar-based indie-soul instead. She made the right choice!

Pottery - a Montreal 5-piece, influenced equally by what was once ‘The Sound of Young Scotland’ (Postcard Records - Orange Juice, Josef K etc) and the synthy art-pop of Devo. The passion and focus of their performance held me in thrall, and was matched by...

SPQR - Local stars. They played for us at last year’s Mental Health Festival and I’ll always love them for that! They’re going from strength to strength! Terrific stuff!

Working Men’s Club - Straight outta Todmorden, and probably the youngest performers on the bill this weekend, this lot are surely destined for greatness! The intensity of singer Sydney Minsky-Sargeant was worth the price of admission alone! They’ve been getting plays on 6Music and their star’s definitely in the ascendant https://youtube.com/watch?v=Q9hNyMj-JtM

Anna Calvi - Tonight’s headliner. What can I say other than she’s a force of nature? A guitar hero for the ages with an operatic voice to match. She stalked the stage like a woman possessed... when we could actually see her! The lighting (near-darkness with the odd pulse of light) was possibly the most photographically challenging I’ve ever encountered at a gig and after trying my camera on just about every setting, I eventually gave up and just let the music wash over me!

Today’s Blip is of Pottery drummer Paul Jacobs, and today’s tune is ‘The Craft’ by Pottery https://youtube.com/watch?v=EC_k3hQL0zg

Once again, I’ve added little galleries of all the above artists on Instagram www.instagram.com/folkiebooknerd