By a coincidence of touring planning, both Suzie Ungerleider and Danni Nicholls’ journey around the venues of the UK and Europe overlapped, so it was fortunate but maybe not unsurprising that their paths might converge at some point. Having played on different days at the Ramblin’ Roots Revue the weekend before, the pair finally caught up in North Staffordshire at St Lawrence’s Church in Biddulph, for Biddulph up in Arms.
In High Wycombe, Nicholls played with a band and on some of her current trip she is playing with multi-instrumentalist Sam Barrett, but on this occasion it was a solo show – just Danni and her sparkly Gretsch guitar.
On this run, Nicholls is promoting a new album Making Moves and this formed the core of her one hour set. One single from the album – The Wreckage – featured early in a set which was laced with extended anecdotes and storytelling. Prior to the delivery of the title track, Nicholls recounted that Making Moves summed up the lessons of her life in the last few years. Grief and realisation that life goes on was a theme in the between song narrative and this added to the intensity of the stripped back acoustic versions of the songs, giving them perhaps more vulnerability than the full band versions.
In what was a largely confessional set, the inclusion of Under the neem plum tree and the story of it being a homage to her grandmother and her love story added further emotional poignancy. Ancient Embers from the same album was another love story, while I’ll carry on, co-written with Michele Stodart allowed a cathartic singalong before the final number A little redemption. It was a whole ten years since Danni Nicholls first played in Biddulph, but in that time, it’s clear that there’s been a lot of life and development.
Despite previous visits to North Staffordshire (In Alstonfield and Leek) this was the first time that Suzie Ungerleider had made it to Biddulph. Accompanied by regular European guitar sidekick BJ Baartmans, Suzie remarked that she was so overcome by the occasion that she’d left her stage dress back in the Travelodge and so she branded the event as “casual Wednesday”.
Baby blues opened the set followed by Juniper where Ungerleider introduced it by mentioning that “we got heavy over COVID – but that’s not mentioned in this song”. The greater levity drew approving responses from the well-behaved and attentive listening crowd. The roughness of You’ll always be featuring gruff electric from Baartmans elicited the best reaction of the night, before Ungerleider contrasted her experience of a grandmother to that of Nicholls in the lead up to Pretty Penny – her grandmother being a gambler and a survivor.
Real Estate – while being an ode to venues and musical scenes past, also carried a sense of foreboding in the implication of culture being lost – there were musical references to DOA The Clash and Sex Pistols – references that struck chords in a fair proportion of the audience. Sleep Little Sailor was then slipped into the set without introduction or comment – but it didn’t need it – it’s still the classic that it always has been and sounded even more ghostly in the light natural reverb of the church.
I’m sorry you’re right was introduced as a song for Ungerleider’s teenage daughter – and the sense of déjà vu and blinding self -awareness when becoming a parent to a child of that age and Mount Shasta recounted yet more familial strife, before Ungerleider took out her phone and played a recording of birds singing in the churchyard – a perfect introduction to The Wilds – with accompanying – and encouraged – birdsong from the audience (although the chap who did a duck impression perhaps wasn’t quite getting it right). Last song was a tale of childhood dreams – My Boyfriend – before a deserved encore of adult adventures getting stoned in Amsterdam.
Outside the church the rain had stopped and the crowd eventually dispersed into the night after brisk merch sales and long conversations with both acts – you can’t do that at the big city enormodomes. A fine evening’s entertainment for less than the price of a night at the cinema from two acts who are both producing high quality, literate and tuneful work.
