Cat Clyde returned to a London stage towards the end of a short set of dates in Europe and the UK. The venue was The Lower Third, nominally on Denmark Street and operating in the same basement complex that once housed the legendary 12 Bar Club. The tour is in support of her fourth album, Mud Blood Bone, her first on new label Concord, which came out earlier this year, and which earned a 9/10 rating from AUK.
Clyde came accompanied by her touring band: Lawrence Hamilton (guitars), Frank Styles (bass) and Danny Brooks (drums). The band took the stage first, decked out in their tour uniforms harking back to an earlier era, and opened the set with an instrumental before Clyde herself emerged, strapped on her electric guitar and launched into Where Is My Love which also opens the new record. The power of the band’s and Clyde’s playing, and the emotion in her vocal, emphasise the bluesiness at the root of Mud Blood Bone and reach out to the sold-out crowd, removing the distance from the room. Overall, we get nine of the new record’s 11 songs in the set.
For the third song, she reaches back to her previous studio record, Down Rounder (2023), for the folk blues of Everywhere I Go. The contrast with the solo acoustic version on last year’s Live At Rare Bird Farm album is marked; the band version is not just fuller but also denser, and Clyde’s vocal rolls over the accompaniment. She tells the audience of her affinity with the moon, a conversation that is sidetracked into one on astrological signs and those with which she feels an affinity. Clyde tells us she is a Taurus. This provides the lead-in to The Gloom, which has a country-folk feel to it, while Clyde’s vocal describes the rural night. The tempo is upped big time for Wild One, a song which has a punk-rockabilly vibe for which the band is well suited and has the audience dancing. The middle section of the set takes in the funky Hold My Hand, the intimacy of Mystic Light, and the oldest song of the night, The Man I Loved Blues.
Clyde switched between his electric and acoustic tenor guitars throughout the night and regularly plays off Hamilton’s imaginative and varied leads. Man’s World, with its combination of vulnerability and strength, is a particular highlight of the evening. Wanna Ride picks up the punk-rockabilly theme once more and tears off at a frantic pace. Clyde and band include one cover in the set: The Beatles’ Yer Blues but played closer to Live Peace in Toronto than the White Album. Musically, it’s a perfect fit to the blues core of the band’s sound, and as it proceeds sees Clyde and Hamilton facing off, trading blistering licks as the rhythm section anchors the song.
The last segment of the set takes a bit of a breath, but by this point, we are all hooked into the sound and the mood of the evening. Clyde tells us she likes to howl and leads the audience in a cathartic communal noise. All The Black, with its Twin Peaks-like twang, takes us into the final segment of the set, which includes a beautiful Night Eyes. She brings things to a close with Mud Blood Bone’s final track Another Time before she and the band take a well-merited bow to a pretty rapturous crowd. She’s played 17 songs, and it’s gone in a flash.
Of course, she is brought back for an encore of The River, which is played solo with her electric guitar as she sings “Like the river I roll along, today I’m here tomorrow I’m gone”. Perfect to end a show. Although, as she tells us tomorrow (or at least January 2027), she’s back with a show at The Scala. I’m fairly sure we will all be there too.
Support for the evening came from Glasgow’s Peach Drum, a six-piece group that turned in a set of mainly spiky indie rock, which at times evoked Altered Images.
