Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Elfin Bow at the Philharmonic Hall’s Music Rooms. April 2018. Photograph by Ian D. Hall.
The Philharmonic Hall Music Room is a place where the song that lifts and lilts, that raises hope as well as the roof, is to be seen with a sense of honour and privilege, the dispensing of the day’s trials and injustice, the scream that builds up inside your mind, is let loose, carefully, gently, the kettle that could not stop whistling is reduced to silence and awe as musicians such as Elfin Bow take to the stage and perform their vigil to impart a subtle sense of well being and many a great song.
Twelve months on from releasing her self-titled album, the intimate nature of her music not only is still required listening for all interested in the power of the Folk genre and its sway over the conscious, eager mind, it is one that resonates with feminine influence and authority, the command of the lyric is a weighty muscle and one used effectively and with absolute charm. It is a charm that held court inside the Music Room with kindness and clout.
Accompanied on stage by the superbly talented Jon Crump, Dan Logan, Terry Coyne, Tom Kitching and Tracy Green, Elfin Bow once more handed out songs such as Sweet Jonathan, Mother Said, the fantastic and haunting Grimshaw and the Fingerclaw, Dorethea, City Beach, and the beautiful new song Miles Away as if they were precious flowers, an image of the Welsh countryside where she now resides, being an abundant source of this wealth passed over with pleasure and authenticity.
Joining Elfin Bow and the band on stage for the song Prairie Madness, the sound captured by the double headline acts was sensational and one that would be returned with compliment and equal beauty in Little Sparrow’s own set later in the evening.
A truly majestic evening of music supplied by the double header format, one in which Elfin Bow and the band revelled in, colourful, natural, a genuine sense of unaffected love that holds all dear; there are few that can hold an audience with such earnest appreciation and for Elfin Bow, it is one that is always a contentment shared.
Ian D. Hall