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Review: 'RED SKY JULY'
'London, Soho, Sanctum Hotel, 19th Jan 2016'   


-  Genre: 'Alt/Country'

Our Rating:
This evening with Red Sky July at Soho's very chic Sanctum Hotel was billed as an Intimate introduction to Red Sky July's new album The Truth And The Lie. It was held in the Variety screening room in the basement of the hotel and was a very cool evening with a short performance to both showcase the new album that is due out on March 25th and help promote the bands up-coming tour to promote the album. Full details of both the album and the tour can be found at Red Sky July online

The band performed as an acoustic trio, stripping the songs down to their essence. They began with the first single and also the title track of the album, the Truth And The Lie, and as with most of the songs they are mainly concerned with lust and regret or alternately about people who should have walked sooner rather than later. It sounded mighty fine with Shelly Poole playing some very cool mandolin to compliment the acoustic guitars being played by her husband Ally McErlaine and by Charity Hair. It came across like the quieter songs that Hazeldine used to play and it was a very cool opener. Actually, while we're on the subject, the video for the single is pretty cool too.

Taking Myself Back was the next song, written with Beth Neilson Chapman. It was about getting your life back together after a break up. Shelly switched to egg shaker on this one to add a little percussion to the carefully strummed guitars as Charity struggled a little bit with her vocal parts. She was suffering from a cold but being a little bit deeper than normal really didn't spoil the harmonies at all.

Dodge seemed to pick the pace up a little bit with Shelly back on mandolin as they sang about leaving the broken relationship the song deals with. It also had great fiddly guitar parts from Ally that sounded really cool. They then did a song about visiting Strathconon in Scotland, which reminded me of visiting Strathpeffer. No surprise really as they are not that far away from each other. The song brings to my mind the beauty of the scenery and the gorgeous country walks and it was a really nice rural walking song.

Which of course brings them to the Walking Country Song that was mostly played on just the two acoustic guitars on what I'd guess will be the second single as. It's one of the catchiest songs on the album with a great chorus that started seeping into my head at the gig and having heard the album a couple of times now it is really one of the stand out songs, full of lots of references to classic country songs. Expect to hear a lot of this song later in the year.

They closed the set with Sway (which also closes the album) and you are meant to stand and sway with your loved one while listening to it. This will certainly work as long as both of you like slightly winsome country love songs. Shelly's tambourine really helped bring them close together at the end.

No surprise they got an encore and paid respects to the musicians who have died recently. But then they chose to sing a Glenn Frey song rather than something by Lemmy which would have been a shock or by Bowie. That would have worked but instead they did The Eagles' Take It To The Limit: a song I've hated for so long it's not true as it really is everything I hate about that band in one song. That said, they did a nice slow quiet version of it that and it didn't make me want to throw up which for that song is no mean feat. Yes that's damning it with faint praise but any praise at all for an Eagles song is a real success if you ask me.

It was really nice to chat to the band afterwards and the tour with a full band will surely be an essential for anyone who likes tasteful, beautifully played homegrown Americana.
  author: simonovitch

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