Callum Gentleman & Mice On Stilts
11th March 2018
Leigh Sawmill Café, Auckland, New Zealand.
Review and Photography by Mike Thornton.
The punters at Leigh Sawmill Café (and this photographer, mind you) are taken pleasantly – if somewhat joltingly – by surprise as Mr. Callum Gentleman breaks the convivial hubbub of Sunday late afternoon pizza and beers with a striking clap-along acapella ditty “Ain’t it a Shame”. This is met with smiles and warm applause as Callum takes the stage to greet us. Reminding us that he doesn’t really need the microphone, he quips that he’ll use it anyway, so sound engineer Rowan (Evans – of Karangahape Road’s Wine Cellar fame) “feels like he’s doing something”.
Just minutes before he’d been partaking of said pizza himself, along with band members and friends, plus guests Mice on Stilts, and had taken the time to greet me and to have a chat – literally just before bursting in to song and on to the stage. He claims that he wouldn’t normally, but hey – tonight’s special – he’s off to New York.
Callum, together with Joel Vincen on guitar and Sam Loveridge (of whom, it turns out; we shall see and hear more, later) then proceed to keep us entertained with a collection of songs that Callum himself describes as the sort of thing you might not expect to choose on a lovely Summer’s evening. This is because they deal often with (again, his words not mine) drugs and debauchery. Some are gloomy, some deal with unfortunate circumstance, depression and accidental death, others with love and sex. You know – the nitty gritty. Just perfect for a languorous Sunday evening in the late summer in lovely Leigh. Certainly he lives up to the billing of folk-noir. Blackest of moods indeed! The EP I’ve been listening to in preparation for tonight has quite a different vibe despite including (naturally) some of tonight’s songs – given that it includes a range of additional artists that aren’t here tonight. On the EP (which is excellent, btw – despite Callum’s tongue-in-cheek jests that you can use it as a Frisbee or a beer coaster) you’ll find the additional voice talents of Reb Fountain, and Alayna Powley, along with a range of various accompanying musos; compared to the pared-down sound tonight. That’s not to say that the show is the less for the reduced production and “mass” of a bigger band. The subject and tone of Callum’s songbook are perfectly matched with the simple, brooding sounds of blues guitar and folk fiddle. The trio before us this evening – two guitars (Callum on acoustic) and violin combine superbly well and deliver the audience a terrific, sultry Americana folk sound to accompany the dark – and darkly humorous – stories that crawl from the underbelly of Callum’s imagination (and experience).
The set list tonight is punctuated with anecdotes and shout-outs. Callum generously acknowledges the terrific musicians that share his stage tonight, the staff and management of Leigh Sawmill “the best bloody venue in the country and that’s no lie”, Rowan on the sound desk. Finally, he introduces his final song of the evening – 2017’s “Blue Collar Killer”. All in all the threesome have entertained us superbly, and there is a short interlude before Callum’s guests take the stage.
Callum’s set had had it’s quiet moments, and I knew to expect periods of extreme hush in the set to follow, too. So – not wanting to be the lumbering clod up front with my cameras ruining the ambience, I approached Ben from Mice on Stilts before they took the stage. I just double-checked that based on what he’d seen of me doing my thing during Callum’s set if he minded the same throughout Mice On Stilt’s portion of the evening. “Absolutely man, totally you do what you gotta do – completely no worries – won’t bother us in the slightest – just go for it”. So I did my thing, whilst they did theirs. As follows:
Mice On Stilts tonight is a six-piece ensemble: Guy Harrison on keys and trumpet (sometimes at the same time), Tim Burrows on upright and electric 5-string bass, Rob Sanders on drums, Charlie Isdale on sax and violin, Benjamin Morley on guitar and lead vocals, and Sam Loveridge (also played for Callum Gentleman earlier this evening) on guitar and violin. It takes them a few minutes to gather on stage and organise themselves – it’s quite a squeeze on the stage for them – what with three multi-instrumentalists and what seems to me (the un-initiated) to be vast banks of pedals and controls with which to tweak all the glorious sounds to follow. Somehow lead singer Benjamin Morley manages to deftly shuffle his bare tattooed feet amongst all this paraphernalia, and gradually the band begins to unfurl their magic cloak and envelope the venue in a vast blanket of beautiful sound.
Morley’s voice is wonderful. It’s at once tragic and hopeful. He manages to produce a sound that seems to pour from the very soul of – well of both listener and singer at the same time, if that makes any kind of sense. More than once I had to stop photographing and simply bask in the waves of emotion that seemed to wash over and through me as I listened – awe-filled / grief-stricken / hope-filled – entirely at the mercy of the band’s mastery of lyrical and musical arrangement. Combine this fantastic vocal instrument with the collective talents of the entire band and you have a powerhouse of prog rock to contend with. Every single sound is precisely placed and expertly deployed – whether in barely audible intricate stanzas by one or two instruments, or the mighty crescendos of the full-throated roar of every piece, topped by that soaring voice – it’s all meticulously engineered. Throughout the evening I am struck by the diversity and depth of the arrangements – at one point I am recalling Pink Floyd, another moment conjures (old) Genesis, then there are more jazz-oriented brass and woodwind and piano sounds, and at other points there are gentle picked guitar and smooth violin, followed by or building to movements of utterly symphonic proportion.
Quite brilliant.
All this from the most humble and gentle people. As Callum before them, Benjamin made mention of Rowan Evans on the sound desk “without whom the K’ Road music scene would not be the same” and the good people of Leigh Sawmill Café.
It was an early night – all wrapped up at about 8.30 p.m. The slightly delayed kick-off probably helped to soak up some of the time left vacant by the billed, but absent, Erny Belle. This was a bit of a shame as I’d loved to hear her in person based on descriptions I’ve heard of her style and sound. All in all though a terrific night and a great send-off for Mr. Callum Gentleman – we wish him well in the US and look forward to the deep, dark, dirty and debaucherously deviant doings that he’ll no doubt get up to (er – be inspired by) in New York, NY, USA. Thanks so much for having me along – great night.
Callum Gentleman:
Mice On Stilts:
Were you there at the Leigh Sawmill Café for this intimate gig? Or have you seen Callum Gentleman or Mice On Stilts perform live somewhere else before? Tell us about it in the comments below!