TAKE A BOW
We headed off for Winter’s End earlier this month, and also bring you live reviews from Nick Mason’s Saucerful Of Secrets, Syd Arthur & the Jack Hues Quartet, Arena, Major Parkinson, Devin Townsend, Terry Riley, John Lodge and more…
“JUDGING BY THE EXPRESSIONS ON SOME PEOPLE’S FACES, WINTER’S END HASN’T EVER WITNESSED ANYTHING LIKE ZIO.”
VENUE The Drill hall, ChepsTow
DATE 04-07/04/19
It’s interesting to note that talking at gigs is one subject that is usually guaranteed to send prog fans into a rage. Prog is more than aware that the majority of attendees at Winter’s and Summer’s End are those who expect to enjoy their live music unencumbered by chat. So it’s equally interesting to note that this year at Winter’s End, more so than any other, an abundance of chatter is evident when a band clearly not to the liking of the otherwise silent chatterers is on stage.
A little more distressing is to overhear one berk openly mocking the foreign accent of one of the artists. One would hope this especially is down to festival fatigue, being Sunday, and over-indulgence, and is not a reflection of the more insidious factors creeping into today’s society. Prog has always been the most welcoming of communities, despite the obvious snobbery that can exist in small pockets. But this kind of attitude is just not on. Fortunately, the general atmosphere of these welcome events is one of camaraderie, and is mostly what’s on offer, as well as some damn fine music.
FRIDAY
We’re thrown a slight curveball with the opening act on Friday, American Aaron Brooks. One man and a guitar isn’t your normal Winter’s End fare, but Brooks’ jovial demeanour and nods to The Beatles eventually wins healthy applause.
Midnight Sun are, however, a much better-known entity, featuring one of the festival organisers, Huw Lloyd-Jones, on vocals. With the band last seen at Summer’s End back in 2017, it seems like we’ve been waiting for their debut album for aeons. Fortunately, Dark Tide Rising is about to drop so it’s a fortuitously timed appearance and a set that throws hints of Marillion and Talk Talk together with some sublimely heavy guitar and adds to a fine performance overall. And if you thought German headliners RPWL were all about sounding like Pink Floyd, then you’d be partly right. But the quartet offer up their new album, Tales From Outer Space, in their impressive set, which is melodic, heavy prog, and a real crowd-pleaser in Chepstow, with an added Pink Floyd cover thrown in for good measure.
SATURDAY
With the festival defying the mythic ‘Winter’s End time’ (it largely runs to time all weekend!), Exploring Birdsong open the Saturday and are utterly charming and completely beguiling. They play piano-led progressive rock with just bass and drums, and two female backing vocalists as accompaniment to Lynsey Ward’s delightful vocal leading things from the front. A bright future, we’d say. French proggers Weend’ô are up next, and were also last seen at Summer’s End in 2017. And my, have they improved. Now with Time Of Awakening released, the band seem to be ever more finding the perfect balance between progressive themes and harder-edged grit. Laetitia’s vocal has clearly grown in stature, no longer lost in the mix as it seemed to be two years ago.
Cyril bring forth a deluge of “Nice one” jokes from the throng, although one suspects the honouring of a 1970s Tottenham Hotspur footballer might be lost on a bunch of Germans. They go down well with the audience, featuring as they do Marek Arnold who most here know from his work with Damanek, and although enjoyable enough, they don’t exactly blow you away. Alas, a family dinner overruns so we miss Scottish proggers Abel Ganz, but talk of them is mostly positive when we do get back to the Drill Hall for Threshold.
Threshold have such great potential. They cracked Europe early on and they’ve made some excellent albums,
2017’s Legends Of The
Shires among them,
but they’ve largely treated the UK and its prog scene as an afterthought, which is disappointing when one considers the standard bearers they could’ve been. Tonight they’re good, but veer towards the perfunctory. The set, largely built around the latest album, is enjoyable, but doesn’t blow you away in the manner you might expect from a band of more than 30 years’ standing. And ultimately, there’s no way round the fact that returned singer Glynn Morgan, while good, is no match for his predecessor Damian Wilson as singer or crowd pleaser. Don’t get us wrong – Threshold are good, but you’re left feeling tonight could have been so much better.
SUNDAY
Sunday starts with a jolt of enjoyable Gibraltan prog metal via the streets of London, in the shape of L’Anima. Fired on by Breed 77 guitarist Pedro Caparros and with former Yardbirds singer Andy Mitchell’s silken croon, they certainly wake up the crowd and even inspire a Winter’s End first: a lone female up and dancing with real enthusiasm! Sadly it’s not what a tiny minority of the audience want to hear, and boy do they let everyone around them know it. German quartet Crystal Palace placate the aged rabble-rousers with a polished set of classic-sounding prog. The band are clearly delighted to be here, and are the second German act to have the crowd tittering at the football connections, one wag suggesting he’d favour the band over the UK football team in a penalty shoot-out. It’s no surprise to see their latest album, Scattered Shards, flying off the merch table.
Godsticks bring with them an element of class with their set of groove-laden heavy prog. The band are very much a well-oiled live machine, having toured with The Pineapple Thief so extensively and with mainman Darran Charles playing second guitar with Bruce Soord’s mob. There are a few grumbles about lack of keyboards from those stuck in a dreadful time warp, but the majority seem to enjoy the technical proficiency. We think they’re rather wonderful.
Judging by the expressions on some people’s faces, Winter’s End hasn’t ever witnessed anything like ZIO. And, let’s say it from the off, the band are fantastic. A joyous breath of fresh air from the minute they dive into a thumping take on Toto’s Girl Goodbye, which morphs into an almost unrecognisable version of Supertramp’s Bloody Well Right. Before you know it, they’re dashing headlong into a cover of Nirvana’s Territorial Pissings (now that really is a Winter/Summer’s End first!), bassist Lzi Hayes hovering over drummer Jimmy Pallagrosi, who is thrashing away at a kids’ drumkit at the front of stage.
But before it all gets too out of hand for some, singers Hayley Griffiths and Joe Payne are introduced, adding another dimension to the band’s sound, which, when they hit their groove, is very melodic, very catchy prog rock. Songs like X-Ray and Wings from the band’s forthcoming debut concept album are big and bold, enhanced by the exhilarating performances of Griffiths and Payne.
And so to headliners Kayak, who amazingly, until the previous night in London, had never played in the UK before, despite being stalwarts of the Dutch prog scene for more than 40 years. The Sunday headline position can be a thankless slot given that an audience of, largely, a certain age having been watching prog non-stop for almost two and a half days. But where some have fallen in the past, Kayak thrive. Theirs is an excellent set of classic melodic prog, which, although leaning heavily towards last year’s Seventeen album, also dips right back to their 1973 debut See See The Sun for Mammoth, and takes in a huge array of material in between. Led from the front by Ton Scherpenzeel’s keyboard sound, the band are in majestic form. Aside from the lanky keyboard player and bassist Kristoffer Gildenlöw, it may be a new and relatively unknown line-up, but Kayak are, alongside Exploring Birdsong and
ZIO, the highlight of a fine weekend.