Montreal, Canada, Constellation, The Universe … with an address like that you don’t need a post code. Everyone knows where you’re coming from. Mighty expectations run ahead and gigs do start, as Efrim observed tonight, "like playing at a Baptism". Word has run ahead and we're expecting a celestial choir, a radio station direct from heaven and the Apocalypse Quite Soon.
What we get is distinctly friendlier, more human and more gracious. The Brudenell Social and Recreational Club is as small a venue as a touring seven piece band with a big reputation from five years of activity could come to. Maybe 400 people have crammed in, the queue is out the door and down the street and people without tickets are having to choose another show, somewhere else in Leeds.
The first thing that I have to absorb from THE SILVER MOUNT ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA AND TRA-LA-LA BAND (hereinafter referred to as SILVER MOUNT ZION) is their friendly, smiling, cuddlesome warmth. Jostling in the crowd to watch openers "LITTLE WINGS", clambering through the packed house to lift the string section onto the tiny stage, and smiling like happy people throughout tuning up, wiring up and saying hello, they're just nice people. I thought they were going to be Rabbis of Doom (at least) – certainly a little severe and other worldly. Wrong again, eh?
The second thing is the shock of hearing Efrim's loud and shudderingly beautiful Travis Bean guitar, turned metal and polished wood, crashing against the rasp of his voice. Soothing tenor he is not. Where the wider collective of God Speed! is geological and metaphysical in scope and sound, SILVER MOUNT ZION are about humanity and the joining of individual spirits. Love rather than awe.
The four string players: two violins, cello, and bass, are active contributors to the sound and structure of the pieces. This is defiantly no whimsical embellishment. The double bass rocks like a bastard, the cello lines are long, lugubrious and beautiful – with adroit pizzicato as required. The two violins squeal like lead guitars, racked up with FX and volume pedals just like the foot-on-monitor brigade. They can just as easily pluck out notes, lay down harmonies, or wait patiently for the next entry, with a bare tattooed foot poised on the volume pedal for another roaring burst.
Murderously big drumming and sweet Italian mandolin playing complete the orchestra. La-la-la is provided by, at times, all seven voices. I had expected the big up-to-the-mic four-part choir thing. Another sweet surprise then, to get natural voices singing for the joy of it, often well back from the mic, and sounding like real people singing straight to your face about something they cared about.
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We get a story about Blimps from Canada's Isle of Wight (Victoria) and we get their wonderful "Teddy Roosevelt's Guns", an epic song of love and despair for (among other things) my personal-favourite-country-in-the-world. Canada is where I lived when rock and roll discovered me in 1960 via Vancouver's Radio CKWX. This song is a kind of high point in the full sweep of the set. We get the full sprawl of SILVER MOUNT ZION'S passion for a world where connection with your neighbour counts for more than your Key Performance Indicator. Their huge achievement is to make such complex music and such stubborn idealism connect with what's left of popular music. You leave the gig knowing that things aren’t as bad as you thought.
LITTLE WINGS' Kyle Field is a man with chemicals in his blood. You can tell what kind of chemicals by the wideness of his eyes and the luxury of his beard. His voice is talky and animated when he sings normally and pure-toned and nimbly instrumental when he slips it into falsetto. At first he sounds accidental and improvised – but it gradually dawns on us that he's got a finely-tuned musical heart, and that he knows all the notes that arrive by magic in the spaces between his bass playing and his singing. He's a Sorcerer, not an apprentice.
His songs are preposterous and beautiful and they take big confident risks. "Shall we do Freebird now?", he asks compadre Lee Baggett. We steel ourselves for a comedy Lynard Skynard cover. It could happen. Worse does. But tonight things are sweet. We get a heartbreaking song about a homeboy who broke away. He was a tree bird, Now he's a free bird. Kyle started the set by singing us all to press forward, he continues in no doubt that we're there, and listening hard. Tonight LITTLE WINGS are a duo. In this version (band members come and go) there are visual and musical echoes of Neil Young with Garth Hudson, with intimations of Will Oldham, Jack Kerouac and Woodie Guthrie. It’s archetypal stuff, no doubt about it. I especially enjoy "So What?" From the current "Magic Wand" album, produced by Calvin Johnson.
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