As a reviewer who has just passed the 50-year mark in his life, there is something very appealing about afternoon gigs on a weekend.
Home in time for your tea is something I can definitely get behind. I’m sure we have all silently groaned at gigs that don’t see the headliner take to the stage earlier than 9 p.m. The early set does come with a slight downside on this occasion though. he is tall. (real name Troels Sørensen) at the lovely Northern Guitars venue at the bottom of Call Lane, isn’t a ticketed event and the free nature of it provides some challenges for the artist during the set – people who have not come to see him come and go, and they don’t do it quietly.
Dressed casually in a tracksuit and woolly hat, he could have stepped straight out of the Winter Olympics currently happening in Italy as he stands on stage. To begin with, it’s difficult to know when the soundcheck ends and the first song begins. The opener has a delicacy to it that would probably come across well on record, or indeed with a more attentive crowd.
However, the first few tracks are clearly competing with bar orders, glasses clinking and loudest of all a group of ladies who are clearly having the time of their lives catching up over a few glasses of wine.
While this definitely isn’t the artist’s fault, it’s not an ideal start or environment for someone who isn’t that self-confident and only has their acoustic guitar for company in an unfamiliar setting on a short four-date UK tour.
Thankfully for all concerned, things start to turn his way with two upbeat tracks with more volume to them in ‘Waterboy’ and ‘Mind Your Manners’. The former, with its promise of ‘here comes the sunshine’, even reduces our favourite prosecco drinkers to background noise and both tracks are well received by all.
he is tall’s parents are clearly a big influence on his life, and his next song is a beautifully realised vignette about his Dad, the subject of parental influence something he returns to in his second set of the day.
He completes the quartet of strong tracks that show what a good songwriter he is, with a brand new track inspired by the Matt Haigh book ‘Reasons To Stay Alive’. For a virgin play, it has a lot of promise and can
definitely be built on after this airing.
A couple more songs finish the first set, with ‘Crickets’ meandering along, but not really catching the energy, or melodic hooks of the previous four and again it’s lost a little in the ambient noise in the venue. I Miss You and America close things in style for the break and at the end of the first set I muse to myself that the score is probably a very even high scoring draw at the moment, between Troels and the more
disruptive influences in the venue!
Good news is just around the corner for him. As the wine is finished and the gaggling group leave the venue, others have trickled in since it started and seem to have a little bit more self-awareness about them, so things look promising for the second set from our visitor from Copenhagen.
Part two opens with a heartfelt and vulnerable song that is themed around a relationship. Whereas in the first set this track would also have been lost, this time the crowd are pretty still, quiet and intently listening to the lyrics and melody that he sprinkles the track with. He follows it up with two tracks linked to his time living in America and it really does feel like a proper gig now, the artist delivering songs that reveal layers to him with each verse and the audience responding respectfully and appreciatively to each one.
The new-found dynamic in the room makes a wealth of difference to the whole experience for everyone. His confidence is up and that’s crucial for someone who says himself that he struggles with inner demons and doubt at times. A lovely song is delivered, inspired by Austrian speed diver Felix Baumgartner. While the song itself doesn’t break the sound barrier in the same way as Felix did, it’s another win with the audience.
Between songs, there is more chatter from our troubadour and he gives some really telling insights into the lyrics and his own personality. We get good-natured back and forth between him and the crowd and that peaks with him bringing laughter describing his thoughts on the UK and his travels across it over the last few days of this tour “surprised by sheep; you have so many sheep over here”.,,
As he announces that he has only one song left, he does something that I imagined impossible an hour previously: he asks for the microphone and the power to his acoustic guitar to be turned off. He’s judged the mood in the room perfectly – you can hear a pin drop as he strides unfalteringly through ‘Snow Fortress’ and it’s both a highlight of the gig as a song and a moment of joy to see him jokingly finish the set with a delayed tiny jump from the stage to the floor a few inches below.
So, triumph over adversity, a movie story most people are familiar with and he’s met with a well-deserved and generous round of applause at the end. He may have gone in level at half time, but this is definitely an away win on foreign soil by the end of it.
Photography by Ela Dumitrascu.
