This trio – Sarah Jarosz, Sarah Watkins and Aoife O’Donovan – always create a buzz ahead of their appearances. The supergroup descriptor is overused, but it is undeniably true in this case from whatever angle you approach it. It’s surprising that the new album “Wild Clear and Blue” is merely their second, some seven years after their heralded debut “See You Around”. They’ve kept popping up in the Americana/roots/folk channels with a swathe of praise from some of the heavyweights of the legacy media (“newspapers” as they were once known) on both sides of the Atlantic, even whilst each member has a busy and developing individual portfolio. Jarosz’s albums invariably feature in the upper ranks on the annual Best Of lists.
Tonight is a one-off UK concert at the plush all-seater Barbican in London’s multi-arts centre, and the 1900 capacity is full for the show. It precedes a vast USA tour that rolls through June to November. They offer up a meticulously polished combo of sparkling instrumental prowess, great songwriting skill and peerless vocal precision. Not surprisingly, there’s a highly polished stage presence. Emphatic that every song is a co-write – a three-headed creature is how they describe this – the unity of the songs is a feature.
A major physical factor is that the trio spent the whole gig standing on a medium-sized rug and sharing just the one microphone for all three voices. Thus, over 90% of the stage is totally unused, and the entire visual focus is on this tiny central rectangle. The shared mic entails lots of leaning in, so the triangular linkage really could not be more pronounced.
The combination of their relatively tight stage patter (in which they give credit to Real World Studios in Box – which they find an intriguing place name) and the songs all being quite compact enables a large majority of songs from their two albums to be played on what is the 10 year anniversary of their first London concert. They also add in the first song they ever played together, John Hiatt’s ‘Crossing Muddy Waters’, its pace, instruments and subject matter a perfect match for their repertoire. Notwithstanding the three-headed creature point, there’s a timbre and structure to a few songs that seems to have the Jarosz hallmark of her solo work.
The intro of ‘Strawberry Moonrise’ – one minute of wordless chant over rippling strings – segues into ‘Find My Way To You’ and takes one straight back to 19th century Appalachia with its barrage of strings and crack-along pace. ‘Different Rocks Different Hills’, like several songs, talks of relationships threatened by physical distance, travel, separation and the demands of working through these challenges; here, using the Sisyphus myth with the two people doing their own individual rock pushing.
‘Mother Eagle’ is an enticing gem, Jarosz’s guitar drawing the listener in, a melody that one could listen to for so much longer. Next up, ‘Only Daughter’ is captivating; “The moon is on the water/I am an only daughter” is an evocative masterpiece, moonlight and water providing the setting; the outdoor landscape a recurring feature of their songs – “Cassiopeia is wrapped around me/Crescent moon is drowning/On a wave of ancient sounds/I’m coming into shore.” Then comes ‘Wild Clear and Blue’; in olden times, it would make a strong single.
The set closer ‘Rhododendron’ – also the new album’s last song – quietly and melodically places the singer in a sylvan setting: “Where I lay my head on the forest floor.” With every song so finely crafted, rehearsed, and performed across the eighty-five-minute set, it’s hard to pick out any standouts, as the baseline is set so high.
We aren’t asked to score gigs out of 10 here, but if this performance were an A Level, an ‘A Star’ would be a given.
The support came from Keenan O’Meara, who was delighted to see such a large audience already gathered when he took to the stage for his first London performance. He plays and, in particular, sings with tinges of a fledgling Jeff Buckley, and his short songs generally avoid the typical verse/chorus pattern. ‘John Talks To His Robot’ is an early song written when the title’s subject matter seemed a futuristic, barely feasible concept. He plays a fine cover of Big Thief’s ‘Karina’ – and discloses that Adrienne Lenker was a former good friend of his in New York City, where she played this emotive song at a barbecue he hosted – and how he told her that her band’s name was terrible and would never work…
Really good review. Just as I remebered it!
I was at the concert in Union Chapel in 2015 (where John Paul Jones played mandolin on a couple of songs!) and have listened to them individually, collectively and in other ensembles before and since. They are wonderful and the performance was perfect. Hard to make comparisons 10 years apart but they’ve gone from the enthusiasm of forming a new relationship to the assurance of complete confidence in themselves and each other. Wonderful playing and harmonies. Thanks for the great review.