Live at Leeds had the City buzzing on Saturday. From Burley Park to The Calls and beyond, every nook and cranny of Leeds seemed to be filled with live music.
The day offered the alternative to the mud-caked chaos you’d find at a conventional music festival. Taking place
mid-November, it also gives punters and the artists themselves one last day to soak up that festival feeling and beat the winter blues with a good old day out in the City.
Gia Ford
I arrived at Headrow House just in time to catch Gia Ford, the Sheffield raised artist. Like many performers today, she’s in the middle of a tour and it showed – herself and her band are tight, confident and played through her half an hour set performing tracks from her debut album Transparent Things. Recorded in Los Angeles with Phoebe Bridgers’ producer Tony Berg, Gia’s silky alt-pop brought to mind artists like Alexandra Saviour, The Big Moon and of course, her Steel City comrade Alex Turner.
Gia sounded impeccable, perhaps thanks to her band and excellent sound engineer. Where her record can feel slightly subdued and airy, her live performance was brooding with an almost frustrated energy, that on the select occasion is let loose for the heavier moments of the set.
Performing at 3pm at a festival of this scale is always going to be difficult. At the start of her set the room was barely half full, but as Gia and co. storm through her set, it slowly filled up. Clearly not phased by the early start time and the mingling crowd, she had the audience looking completely captivated by the time her 30 minutes are up.
I would highly recommend catching Gia Ford live. It may just be one of those ‘I saw her before she blew’ moments.
Metropolitan festivals are a bit of an adventurous affair, I personally find. Stumbling into a bar or venue out of curiosity can lead you to discover some incredible new acts – which was the case for me, when I found myself at The Wardrobe later on in the evening to watch Leeds lads, Van Houten.
Van Houten
Fresh off releasing their second full length offering The Tallest Room earlier this year, Van Houten is on home turf tonight, with a recorded sound that throws back to the 90s dreamier, lo-fi side, complete with a healthy dose of shoegaze. The West Yorkshire natives’ most recent record sounded like a band that has grabbed their influences by the scruff of the neck and made it entirely their own.
Roughing up their influences aside, one thing’s for certain, and that is that Van Houten are clearly a band that have years of experience. With the better part of a decade under their belt, the band is tight and well rehearsed – almost to their detriment in my opinion.
It would’ve been fun to see them move around a little more on stage for the heavier moments. However, while they might lack in on-stage attitude, they make up for by being extremely proficient musicians, and it’s a lot of fun to watch them conjure up such a huge sound.
As with every shoegaze band I’ve ever seen, Van Houten is immensely loud – creating a textured, rich and powerful wall of sound. I myself found the experience totally immersive – bordering on cathartic – something I haven’t felt since hearing Deafheaven’s Sunbather record for the first time.
They pulled a decent crowd (and for good reason), proving to be one of the brighter, more promising young acts on the local scene. They managed to balance out the inherently self- indulgent side of shoegaze by treating the audience to cuts like Only Wanna Be With You which is more Fidlar or Wavves than it is Slowdive or My Bloody Valentine, and went down really well with the audience, despite being incredibly short.
I’d be excited to see them develop their on-stage personas, and can imagine that over the next few years they’ll continue to build a solid and loyal fan base. Both their recorded and live offerings are executed with excellence.
