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Review: 'MG Boulter and Robert Chaney'
'Live at the Railway Tavern Dalston'   


-  Genre: 'Folk' -  Release Date: '7.5.15.'

Our Rating:
This was Mule Freedom's election night special time to drown our sorrows ahead of the results or was it to celebrate the end of the Coalition in light of the actual results it's hard to know but far more drowning to be done now.

Either way it was a good chance for me to See Robert Chaney play live for the first time as his small tour of Dalston and Hackney continues apace as I missed his sold out Album launch show at the Servants Jazz Quarters a good 150 yards from The Railway Tavern a couple of weeks ago. Still now the excellent Cracked Picture Frames is out I wanted to hear it live.

Robert opened with Does Your Love Pay Out In Full? with some careful picking on his Acoustic Guitar and a voice that instantly sounded like a cross between Pete Lafarge and early 1960's Dylan it grabbed at us and the darkness in the lyrics seemed to work pretty well. Patch It Up was next and was also nicely sparse with his voice having loads of emotion as he told this tale of love gone wrong.

The next song about being so far from here reminded me of Tom Paxton quite a bit which is no bad thing and as the set progressed the picking only got better as he told us of how you took me in, sorry I don't know all the songs titles. Still The Cyclist was every bit as sad and chilling live as it is on the album and as soon as Robert raised his voice suddenly all the chattering at the other end of the pub seemed to disappear.

The Ballad of Edward and Lisa sounded every bit as dark and twisted and Bob Frank like as it did on the album. He then brought on Laura Tenschert to share vocals on Corazones Amarillos her voce added a slightly ethereal feel to Robert's sound. They then closed Roberts set with I didn't Want Her Anyway that played as a duet transformed the song into a great country love fight song, sort of like Waylon and Linda duking it out it sounded great.

They came back for an encore that started with a song about a House Of Cards that was a cool duet and they then finished with a rather lovely unrehearsed song about how when they Love they stumble and fall I'm not sure who did the original but I seemed to know most of the words so must have heard it before. A cool set and Robert Chaney is well worth seeing live.

After the break it was time for what was meant to be an MG Boulter solo set but turned out to be a MG Boulter Trio show and all the better for it as he was joined on "stage" by Paul Ambrose on Double Bass and Lizzy O'Connor on backing vocals and a cigar box tambourine thing and egg shakers.

He opened the set solo with a song about how She Was An Afterthought that was full of regret and longing and sounded damn fine. Think You Free Mary was a nice duo with Lizzy providing some percussion with her cigar Box Tambourine thingy that worked really well. Go See Maria was the first of the new songs MG played from his next album due out later in the year. It sounded mighty fine played as a duo with Lizzy tender and yet a touch on the dark side.

Cellar Sight was the next new song this was played to begin with as a duo with Paul Ambrose finally starting to play rather than standing hugging his double bass as he had so far and about halfway through it Lizzy joined in. The Defeatists Hymn was next and we had no idea how timely it was to be hearing this song as the exit polls were being revealed elsewhere and being a defeatist became a national reality a very cool song for our times no doubt.

Love Trees had a very harmonious feel to it as if we should all be planting Love Trees everywhere we can and well it has to be better to love than hate. We then had a sort of Love letter to a sacked drummer called Half Life off of The Water Or The Wave album that has some really cool lyrics to it.

Cold Spring The Lucky Strikes song was played as a duo with Paul's double bass working as a nice undertow to MG's acoustic picking. That was followed by Night Driving about being stuck on the A14 somewhere between Norwich and Southend in a traffic jam that shouldn't be there, somehow he managed to not make any sly cracks about being stuck inside of Eye with the Rayleigh blues again, but has anyone ever been stuck in Eye it's such a small village.
They then closed with a nice version of The Butcher & Mrs Shaw off of The Exile & The Sea that worked really well in this sparse version.

They came back for an encore of The Last song We Shall Sing well what else would you encore with if you have a song of that nature it was a cool closer only well we got one last solo song from MG with a nice calm version of One Day The Waves that left us all feeling nice and calm before the storm hit during the night.
  author: simonovitch

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