Georgie Hume & The Pity Party
A great set from a talented trio, and great fun to boot, Georgie Hume and The Pity Party are a band that will be welcome back in Norwich any time.
artist
Whilst local pioneer art-rock legends The Neutrinos were performing to a sold-out capacity crowd at Norwich Arts Centre last night, I took myself off to the subterranean splendour of St Benedicts Streets' alternative live music venue The Holloway, where London tropical jazz trio Georgie Hume and The Pity Party were making their Norwich debut.
With a sound that incorporates an intoxicating blend of 60's Jamaican jazz, Cuban-inspired rhythms and 1950's easy listening, Georgie Hume and The Pity Party take their audiences into a world of toe-tapping instrumentals, with Hume's authentically-inspired period guitar work being complemented by regular bass player Silas Maitland, and drummer Max Revell.
Formed in 2023, and signed to London label Zero Fret, the band came to the public's attention last year with their release of a lounge-styled cover of The Specials' 1981 number one hit 'Ghost Town', with vocals by Ade Omotayo. Tonight it is a cool instrumental version of that classic two-tone tune, but one that still brings the memories flooding back. Another cool cover is the band's opening track, a version of the Beck classic, The New Pollution. And whilst it is a set that is almost exclusively instrumental, a guest vocalist joins the trio half way through the set for a vocal country-calypso crossover version of Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues – something that you will probably never hear from The Neutrinos.
Original compositions such as recent single Parquet Parakeet are alternated with tributes to jazz legends like Willis 'Gator' Jackson, and tropical tunes inspired by American jazz, Bossa Nova and Jamaican reggae. Together, they have us shuffling and swinging as if we are back in the days of Bert Weedon and Hank Marvin, twisting on our shag-pile carpets whilst loading up the auto-change record player and knocking back the Martini cocktails.
A great set from a talented trio, and great fun to boot, Georgie Hume and The Pity Party are a band that will be welcome back in Norwich any time.
Opening support came, in a completely different vein, in the shape of a solo performance from Norfolk singer songwriter Paul Dewbury aka The Winterlong. A familiar figure on the Norwich pub and club circuit (where he is usually joined by 12-string guitar player SimonEvans), beautiful songs like Last Words, The Link and Grains of Sand really did not need to be fed through those big speakers in such a cosy intimate space. If the set had been performed unplugged, certain members of the audience might not have been tempted to talk loudly all the way through and would, instead, have shown some respect to the artist and to the rest of those present. Having performed earlier in the year for the Norfolk and Norwich Festival, and for First Light Festival, The Winterlong is definitely a name to listen out for.
