The Lasting Days
The Prom, Bristol
10/08/2011

Have you ever heard a mandolin scream? Or a stomp-box tortured, violin crying piercingly like lamenting wind? Here and there, The Lasting Days summon such sonic contortions in their blusterous hour of slick, emotional folk rock tonight; at times dreaming up eyes-full-of-moon pensiveness a la Fleetwood Mac and the poetic gusto of Arcade Fire.

Nowhere on their last mini-album, ‘October, Looking South’, however, can these post-rock-like squalls be found. It’s a softly elegiac affair. A mellow, book-learned collection of studies on life, loss and love. On it, they captured a reserved, mild-rock tenderness, which occasionally veered into candied mawkishness. Tonight, however, they cut free, giving their songs legs to run, space to breathe. They affirm they can rock out with assured fleet-footedness, flaunting an aptitude for layered but controlled sonic experimentation all the while.

Central to their charm is violin-sawing frontman, Rich Smith, who throughout the performance switches between fiddle and guitar. However, it is with violin in hand that he reaches harmonic and exploratory peaks. He plucks and loops shards of plinking melody. He astonishingly channels ghostly murmurs through its pickups too. Opener ‘Paper to Burn’ is a sickly sweet breeze of hushed vocals and poppy guitar hooks. They get into stride with ‘Lenador’, which gears up slowly, layering sparkling guitars and boy-girl harmonies, ending with a punchy surge of power-chords, guitarist Huw Jones wringing sky-high wails out of his mandolin. ‘Little Silver’ chimes glassily, bottling essences of Radiohead circa ‘In Rainbows’, and they’re in full flight with the feisty jig-rock of ‘Seven Minutes’ which segues into ‘Black Sun’, closing with a whirlwind of parched screams and whipping eddies of distortion.

Evidence that, especially when they experiment, that The Lasting Days are capable of great things.

Jamie Skey