Review - TWISTED FOLK TOUR, Leeds City Varieties, 19th Feb - EARLIES, THE / HEM / LEVEN, JACKIE

Sam Saunders reviews the Twisted Folk Tour evening at Leeds City Varieties for Whisperin & Hollerin, featuring The Earlies, Hem and Jackie Leven. He finds the mix not entirely comfortable, noting people sitting out one set or another in the bar, but “safe programming never baked any muffins”. Most of the review goes to The Earlies (eleven musicians, big multi-part singing, at their best in “Devil's Country”, with a Tim Buckley song winning him over) and to the more controlled, warmly tender Hem, centred on singer Sally Ellyson.

Of Leven he writes that he is “well known in these parts” and had his song about Leeds “ready and oiled”. Strictly speaking it is a song about leaving Leeds on the train, “but that's a nice way to go”; Leven's fine voice and guitar playing did it proud, ending with a convincing train impression tapped and scraped out on the guitar. His set always balances gritty Glaswegian anecdotes with sorrowful songs, and the voice gets richer and more decorated as time goes by: “It really is quite an instrument.”

His presentation is much more like the old folk-club raconteur and singer, though he still claims to be the “bitter and twisted, rather than just twisted, end of folk”. Saunders found some truth in that this evening: the mournfully wry tale of his mother's recent death maybe told the audience more than Leven wanted them to know. He closes the Leven section with the line that the world needs the likes of him.