Will Varley @ Waterfront Studio
Come back for another round anytime, fella.
Just before Will Varley embarks on his set I get passed some promotional material from Xtra Mile records. I look at it and think, ‘Ah, yes, of course he’s signed to the same label as Frank Turner’. This will make total sense if you’ve heard the barking rumble of Varley’s folk, a man with a guitar biting at the microphone to make a point about something. Though where Turner has now long jettisoned anything overtly political from his work, Varley fills his songs with anti-establishment commentary and thrives off of it. It’s a dangerous line to take but the triumph comes when it’s done just right, and our man right here has done this long enough now to pull it off with his eyes closed.
Charismatic, funny and assured, Varley puts himself not so much on a soapbox as on a bar stool. Think ‘Pub Conversations: The Musical’ and you might imagine something close to what’s on offer. It’s a gig of dry but joyful cynicism and just like being at the local for a pint or five the topics swerve from side to side, taking in war, supermarkets, advertising, the political elite, YouTube, life and death and more, punctuated with both genuine humour and, at times, a potent sobriety. Behind the crowd banter and the boyish smile Varley still manages to convey his integrity and the realities of what inspires his tracks, an engaged presence who talks with, rather than down to, his audience.
He plays with the swagger of some kind of pirate-messiah, winning the crowd over in the process. These aren’t tracks of grand technical majesty but Varley harnesses the energy and power of a stage with such determination that you can’t but help get swept up along the way. The singer-songwriter can consider his flag to be planted firmly in East Anglian ground. Come back for another round anytime, fella. It’s on us.
