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My first experience of standing tightly crowded in a field for the love of music was not the euphoric epiphany it promised to be. To be fair, it was a long, long time ago; I was fifteen and fragile. Some of my fellow patrons were fearless and fighty. I retreated to a safe spot and tried not to think of the Battle of the Somme. Somewhere in a different postcode, I could vaguely make out one of my favourite bands doing their thing.
Read MoreAt Shepherd’s Bush Empire, the RGM team reminisce about the range of artists we’ve had the pleasure of seeing on its stage over the years. The very fine grade II listed building was used for nearly forty years as the BBC Television Theatre and, since becoming a music venue in 1994, it really hasn’t changed much. This is something of a comfort, particularly with the bleaching of Soho and the razing of the surrounding areas having deleted some much-loved venues from the capital’s landscape. So, the Empire feels a bit like home. And, in a certain way, Darlingside have made the UK feel a little like home too. They have - deservedly - come a long way since we first featured them in 2016: they’ve appeared at the Cambridge Folk Festival, earned a live session on the BBC Radio 2 Folk show and toured the UK several times over; graduating from London’s Slaughtered Lamb via the Union Chapel to a headline show here at Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Or should I say “Shepherd’s Empire Bush” as chief banterer Harris Paseltiner (guitar/cello) initially refers to it. They’ve been looking forward to the show for a long time but have been syntactically confused about its name until their arrival…
Read MoreEvery now and again here at Red Guitar Music we are lucky enough to receive a CD in the post that turns out to be just a little bit special. Darlingside and their ‘Birds Say’ album was a case in point, I was keen, but fellow RGM scribe Rich Barnard won the lottery, got to work and his resulting review concluded “Darlingside have stories to tell, mysteries to solve and journeys to take us on. Birds Say manages the impossible; it is humble and bold; it is familiar and strange; it is slick and fragile. It is, in short, a total delight”. To support the UK release of the album the band had a slot booked at the prestigious Cambridge Folk Festival before they embarked on a short run of intimate UK shows concluding with the Slaughtered Lamb in London.
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