For one night only, the Kitchen Garden Café ditched the
quaint singer-songwriter ethos and kicked the proverbial in the guise of
Swedish alt-country trio Baskery. The regular nine month stints the Bondesson
sisters have spent in Nashville has formed a dim view of the modern country
music direction and inspired them to further pursue a mission of spreading the
word of mud country and banjo punk. A ninety minute set of frenzied activity, raucous
tunes and using every inch of the confined space saw a Birmingham audience
thankful that Baskery had ended their five year exile of playing the city.
In fact the three sisters, now veterans of three studio
albums with a fourth on the way, admitted that they had neglected the UK market
for too long with festivals and the odd date being their recent focus on our
shores. On the evidence of this evening, the songs, sound, stage show and
passion is in place to build an audience that had an initial lift half a dozen
years ago with an opening slot on Seth Lakeman’s 2008 tour. With a striking
visual presence and enamoured chemistry, the girls have well and truly branched
out from their Stockholm roots becoming strong international artists in their
own right.
From a left to right audience view, Stella holds things
together on upright bass; Greta’s multi-faceted input excels on banjo and
percussion, while Sunniva mixes the acoustic and electric rhythm guitars.
Together they share, harmonise and combine vocals to bring a bunch of songs
that both inform and entertain with only the odd cover thrown in. Tonight, Neil
Young’s ‘Only Man’ got the Baskery
treatment suggesting where they get their lyrical inspiration from to add flavour
to a sound paying homage to bluegrass, old time country and the raw energy of
new wave punk.
Interspersed between the songs, often in extended live mode,
was a mixture of irreverent chat and informed background to their origin with
perhaps the most interesting being ‘The
Big Flo’, taken from the most recent album LITTLE WILD LIFE. In addition to
the theme of that particular song, incidentally a contrived plane crash in
Mexico, we also learned how newspapers inspired Sunniva to write ‘The Last Beat’. Along with these pair of
songs, of which the latter shaped up to be the encore number, the recent album
offered ‘The Shadow’ and an a Capella
opening with ‘Northern Girl’.
The signal that the girls are about to enter the studio to
record another album came with two preview numbers ‘Cat Flap’ and ‘Cactus Boy’,
songs which on first listen appeared to have a more alt-country rock feel to
them. However the two highlights of the evening saw the band return to their
debut release, FALL AMONG THIEVES. ‘I
Haunt You’ closed the main set, while the girls produced a frantic peak on ‘One Horse Down’ with Greta taking the
banjo to its limit and Sunniva deciding it was time to raise the stakes in the Café
a little higher turning the bass drum into a platform to showcase her guitar
playing skills. The come down from that evening high saw a more tender song in ‘Tendencies’ as the venue had its usual demeanour
returned.
An evening initially delayed by traffic problems, got off to
an impressive start with a good opening set from local artist Alex Olm, ably
supported by Julianne on fiddle and defined by a subtle mesmeric vocal style
utilising the sound system well. An effective support artist always sets up the
main event well as Baskery proceeded to raise the temperature and remind
everybody what an exciting live act they are. We need the Bondesson sisters to
keep their promise of increased Baskery UK shows as there is definitely a
growing audience thirsty for more of their Swedish take on Americana music.
www.baskery.com
