Music > Live Reviews

David Ford & Beth Rowley

OPEN

02/06/18

The first time I saw David Ford perform a solo set (I think it was at  Latitude festival back in 2006) the experience left me in a state of exhausted awe and wonderment. Twelve years later, as he begins a tour to launch his new album Animal Spirits in Norwich Open's Club Room, he is still doing it.

This time around he is accompanied by Beth Rowley, the soulful singer songwriter from Bristol who had a massive hit with the album Little Dreamer in 2008, and who herself performed at Open just last October to debut new material ahead of her highly anticipated new album.

Well, we are still awaiting that new album, although we are reassured that Gota Fría (taking its name from a Spanish meteorological phenomenon that results in a stationary area of low pressure) is now set for a June 29th release. Tonight Beth performs six songs from Gota Fría, although Princess is revived from her 2013 EP Wretched Body. She freely admits to  preferring performing to recording, so tonight's set, with David Ford providing accompaniment on guitars and keyboard, is an absolute delight. The songs are strong, and personal, and are delivered with her blend of smoky soulfulness and jazz and gospel overtone that combine to deliver contemporary flavour within a classic brew. Forest Fire, Run To The Light and Brave Face convincingly whet the appetite, together with the title track and the highly personal Brother.

Once again, David Ford chooses not to tour with a backing band but instead builds up an accompaniment to each song via a challenging process of looping, with each instrument played for a mere few seconds before hitting the pause pedal and frenetically moving on to the next. Take, for example, his opening number – Downmarket. To a handful of strummed bars on the acoustic guitar are added rhythmic enhancements from shaker and tambourine, a snaking bass line arrives courtesy of a six-string electric guitar, and then drum pads, keyboards and snatches of backing vocals complete the assemblage. And all in less time than it takes some bands to perform a standard song intro. When the vocals do kick in the song becomes an angry outburst on austerity politics and the collapse of the banking system. With lines like 'A plague on all your houses, sell a generation cheap', David Ford is here to vent his spleen. By the end, even his guitar seems to be howling with outrage.

Animal Spirits borrows its name from the book written by Akerlof and Shiller and published in 2009 (full title 'Animal Spirits – How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism), and as David Ford explains, he reads all the books and thereby saves us having to. You don't get that with Ed Sheeran. Tonight's set tonight features another six tracks off Animal Spirits album, several of which we first heard at last June's Norwich Arts Centre gig, almost a full year ahead of Animal Spirits' release.

Fans of earlier material were not left disappointed either -  audience favourite State of the Union dates right back to 2005, and Song For The Road is included as a reminder of when Ford claims to have been at his happiest and carefree, touring with no money and a beaten up Nissan van. And perhaps that is where Ford needs to occasionally take a step back and lighten up a little. His performances are incredibly intense, and his subject matter is both well-researched and argued. Only when support act Beth Rowley joins him on stage to sing backing vocals on Song For The Road and on One Of These Days does he seem to relax, and finds time to ask us how the Canaries did last season.

The 'dismount' of the set begins with a cautionary tale of unwise spending in The Ballad of Miss Lily followed by the final track off Animal Spirits, ominously entitled I've Lost More Than I Ever Thought I Would. A duetted encore of the George Michael and Aretha Franklin hit I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me) featuring both Ford and Rowley concludes a stunning evening spent in the company of these two very different, yet strangely complementary, singer-songwriters.