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Review: Sailing Stones, St George’s – ‘Why is it so radical?’
This gig at St George’s is a bit different.
It’s the middle of the afternoon, the back doors to the Glass Room are open to the garden. There are children here. The atmosphere is warm, relaxed, and slightly at odds with the concrete and institutional grey tiled carpet.
This is the Sailing Stones album launch, marking Jenny Lindfors’ re-entry back into the choppy waters of performance after a long matrescence and this album’s gestation. It is part of the Lightime Music programme in collaboration with the Mothers in Music network.
is needed now More than ever
Alice Ballantyne-Dykes (top, middle) founded the Mothers in Music network to give mothers from across the industry a chance to meet, share and perform – photo: Alice Ballantine Dykes
We are told in the introduction by Alice Ballantine Dykes of the Mothers in Music initiative that this daytime programming is an “experiment” to allow women in music to perform and promote their work, while still being available for their families in the evening.
She points out that theatre has always had matinees, so why not music: “Why is it so radical?” She calls it a “small but important cultural revolution”, and invites us all to join it. It shouldn’t feel so radical, and yet it does.
Poet Lily Redwood is technically supporting Sailing Stones, and she’s first on stage after the introductory remarks.
But as she and Lindfors alternate, each playing two sections, it’s more like they support each other, turning the traditional, hierarchical structure of a standard gig into something more collaborative, responsive and communal.
Lily Redwood: powerful poetry from “the edge of the abyss” – photo: Lucy Langley-Palmer
There’s a dialogue between Redwood’s words and Lindfors’ music, common themes and threads of motherhood that play out more naturally this way. They compliment each other.
Both women somehow embody both fragility and strength but while Redwood leads us through the darkness and lets the light, eventually, begin to trickle in, Lindfors is the other way, ostensibly sweet and light but with a melancholy hovering just above it all, a hint of heartache, caught somewhere in those exquisite chromatic grace notes.
Redwood starts with a few content warnings about themes of suicide, mental health and trauma, a tacit reminder that while this show welcomes children, it is not necessarily for children.
Her poems take us to the edge of the abyss, but they are full of beauty. They are visceral and raw, and sometimes x-rated and sweary. They are powerful and, above all, they are honest and true.
Next Sailing Stones takes to the stage. She has a 70s folk aesthetic – wide jeans, headscarf, bare feet- that would seem more at home in a field of wild flowers than the semi-corporate surrounds of the Glass Room.
The nostalgia seeps through into her music too. Her voice and lyrics are sun-soaked, but in sepia. She opens with her single Don’t Tempt the Shadow from 2020 album Polymnia.
Her voice is fresh and clear and, paired with the stark imagery in her songs, there’s an enchanting vulnerability.
As with Redwood, her patter between the songs is disarming and draws us closer in. She has a certain magnetism, and there’s a wonderful moment after she starts to sing when a gaggle of children in the audience simultaneously surge forward to hover at the front, as if drawn out by the pied piper.
Later, a small child unceremoniously thrusts a bunch of buttercups into her hands.
This was an event that welcomed the whole family; gigs that are accessible for parents and their small people are sadly few and far between but Mothers in Music is trying to rectify that – photo: Lucy Langley-Palmer
Redwood’s final poem of the afternoon is Shit Mum. It starts as an incantation of mum guilt, a liturgy of failings, but there’s a gradual shift and awakening: “It’s not you that’s broke, Mum / This system’s got you in a choke-hold, Mum.”
And then it resolves to a chant of affirmation: “You’re only as good as the support you receive, Mum”, “You don’t have to do this on your own, Mum” .
It’s the ideal handover for Sailing Stones, who this time comes back to the stage with a full band supporting her, a drummer, another guitarist and more vocals, who lift and raise up Lindfors’ own voice in her final song, Indigo.
Each element of this show has coalesced into a feeling of radical connection, support and community. And all before 4pm. I think it’s safe to say this experiment was a success.
Viva this “small but important cultural revolution”, and here’s to making music even more inclusive.
Main image: Lucy Langley-Palmer
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