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Review: Lizzy Hardingham, Downend Folk & Roots – ‘Opens her lungs and pins the audience to the wall’
A story broke on the folkier corners of social media today. It’s a story about the brilliant folk singer Emily Portman and her “new” album.
You see, some…um…nasty piece of work has put out some music, claiming that it’s her new album. It’s not. You can tell it’s not her, ‘cos it’s rubbish. It’s an AI version of Portman. It’s not real. It’s a figment of the Internet’s imagination. It’s a fake.
Folk music, of course, is at its best when it’s real. When real musicians play real music in a real venue and things don’t get much more “real” than tonight.
Dan Sealey has traded in stadium stardom for intimate acoustic folk club gigs
Dan Sealey used to be the bass player in Britpop mod-botherers Ocean Colour Scene, but that’s easily forgiven. His short set was packed with hummable indie folk songs; just his fantastic, rough-round-the-edges voice and an acoustic guitar.
There’s the heartfelt sentimentality of In the Blink of an Eye and the simmering fury of Keep on Reading – both are master classes in indie-folk song writing.
His version of Ocean Colour Scene’s Riverboat Song is a beautifully mournful thing
Sealey exudes honesty as pin-sharp observations tumble from his strummed guitar and snippets of urban England are laid bare. A snatch of musical hall, a nod to his dad, a welcoming way with a story and Sealey is, immediately, someone you want to listen to.
His version of Riverboat Song even makes you re-appraise his old band. It’s a cracking song and, stripped of the Chris-Evans-in-a-bucket-hat memories, the perfect start to the evening.
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If Dan Sealey is all honesty and affability, then Lizzy Hardingham is the real deal.
She’s in possession of a voice of quite remarkable power: when she sings a song, it stays sung. There’s not a missed note, not a single uncertain wobble, not even the merest hint of weakness. She is jaw-dropping.
And, in truth, it takes something pretty special to distract from her band. With Katriona Gilmore on fiddle, Jonny Wickham on double bass and Lukas Drinkwater on electric guitar, Hardingham has assembled some of the finest folk musicians in the country.
Downend folk club was stunned by the stellar quality of Hardingham’s band and the power of her voice – photo: Lizzy Hardingham
There’s no point in having a great band and an incredible voice if you’re not going to put it all to good use, of course. Hardingham sings of love and loss, of bees and small boats, of identity and heartbreak, she sings of all of the big things but has that fabulous knack of making the political personal.
Harvester of Gold packs a serious punch. For a song about the threat to bees, there’s no gentle thrum here. This is a fat bumblebee of a song, a powerful shout.
Drinkwater’s filigree electric guitar and Gilmore’s fizzing fiddle buzz across Wickham’s fluid bass as Hardingham simply opens her heart, opens her lungs and pins the audience to the wall.
On latest EP Gingerbeer, Hardingham considers folk music through a queer lens, ruminating on love, identity and community
She might have an intense power but Hardingham knows her way around an old-fashioned folk song too. Lord Donald’s Wife references folky classic Matty Groves (Fairport Convention et al), purposefully declining to name the “wife”.
Her voice is, again, awesome but it’s buoyed by Gilmore’s harmonies, both telling the tale, edging the whole thing towards “classic” status.
Such is Hardingham’s ability with a folk song that there are several times when you’re quite sure that these songs must hark back centuries. They don’t.
Mary and Anne, taken from the recent Gingerbeer EP, is about gay pirates, it is sea-splashed and rolls on a double-bass driven wave while Let Me Swim has echoes of Nancy Kerr in its selkie tale.
It is, however, Singing Together that is the massive highlight of her set. It’s an end-of-the-night song to rival the Parting Glass, it’s joyful and celebratory, a song made for singing. More than anything it’s a song that brings real voices together, in a real place.
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Those people that put that AI Emily Portman thing up should be strung up by their thumbs and pelted with old Steeleye Span records.
They are dreadful human beings. They debase everything that Hardingham, Drinkwater, Gilmore, Wickham and Sealey hold dear. They make our lives poorer, whereas those real musicians make everything better. AI versions? Folk ‘em!
Read more of Gavin’s ruminations on folk at tallfolk.substack.com
All images (except where stated): Barry Savell
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