Sea + Air @ The Bicycle Shop
Delightful.
I love the cosy Handlebar downstairs at Norwich's Bicycle Shop in St Benedict's Street. Its subdued lighting and intimate atmosphere lends itself perfectly to an unplugged performance, with a small and attentive audience. It was slightly unusual, therefore, to find the stage set up with harpsichord, Roland keyboard, drums and electric guitars, ready for German ghost-pop duo Daniel Benjamin and Eleni Zafiriadou, otherwise known as Sea + Air.
Intrigue also came from the pair's own Facebook page, where they had earlier posted that, after an acoustic performance at nearby Soundclash Records, they would be performing their Stadium Rock show at The Bicycle Shop.
In actual fact, Sea + Air are much less likely to have the neighbours complain about the noise than having a Sofar Sounds session plugged into a 13amp domestic power point. The stadium rock thing, like their feigning to be The Scorpions playing incognito, is just a healthy piece of self-deprecating Teutonic humour. Their name is a pun on the German for She and He – Sie und Er, although Benjamin is reputedly frightened of water and Eleni claims to be afraid of flying.
And perhaps that is where you would probably start trying to draw comparisons with other contemporary male/female duos, remembering the likes of She & Him, Oh Wonder, and even Avec Sans. But what makes Sea + Air stand out is the prominent use of Johann Sebastian Bach's favourite instrument, the harpsichord, not really seen out in the pop world since the summer of 1966 with The Beach Boys and The Mamas and The Papas. On record they also use traditional Greek instruments like the bazouki and lyra.
They kick off their set with Take Me For A Ride, opening track to the 2013 debut album My Heart's A Sick Chord (do you get it? - My Harp-si-chord). Another example of that pun-filled humour that Europeans delight in using to show off their command of the English language.
Benjamin and Eleni then delight us with a mixture of older songs, like the pacey Dirty Love and the quirky Do Animals Cry?, mixing them with tracks from the latest album Evropi, a much more personal album with songs like Pain Is Just A Cloud and Should I Care. Although dealing with the pain of today's migration crisis, these two songs recall Eleni's own family fleeing first to Greece, and then on to Germany almost one hundred years ago.
They end with an encore of You Are, a beautiful love song which they dedicate to the people of Norwich. They thank us for coming out to see them - it is a 'Pay What You Want' event, with the pair getting all of the door money. It may be a low-key event but the warmth from the audience is real enough. Sea + Air continue their UK tour in a similar vein, visiting four more provincial venues and with a date at London's Gallery Café.
For a band that has played in front of 30,000 people in Germany supporting Andreas Bourani, as well as touring with the likes of White Stripes and The Flaming Lips, this may seem like a hard slog to raise their profile in the UK, but those present at The Bicycle Shop last night will agree that they deserve to succeed.
