Yes I'm back in the Hipsterville of Dalston for this Mule Freedom Presents Night at the Railway Tavern in St Jude Street.It shouldn't be confused with the Railway Tavern just outside Dalston Kingsland station about 500 yards away, a walk down what could be a quite scary side street containing a couple of very funky looking west Indian take-aways, an African joint and what looked like a Jefferson Airplane tribute restaurant called White Rabbit of course.
That and a dodgy looking club with no name that could well be the mysterious Dalston Fisting Club for all I know meant I kept walking till I found the Railway Tavern at the bottom of St Jude Street: a recently pulled up by its boots old spit and sawdust bucket of blood pub as was. It's now a very cool, very well stocked pub with a good selection of beer that meant I could sit drinking Chimay Red label while watching tonight's show. Result.
So this being St Jude Street, am I here to see a lost cause or two? I hope not and I have to say neither of tonight's acts are a lost cause. First on is Yorkshire's latest Folk rock hope ROBERT JAMES SELBY who has moved down to Stoke Newington with an acoustic on his back and a white hat on his head to sing about Cat's Pillows and Toby Shafton to begin with.
Robert has a pretty good voice and although his playing is fine throughout it doesn't quite spark my interest as much as his lyrics do. The new song he does that may be called Just like You Do seems to be one of those arguments waiting to happen or just happened, maybe. Not a bad song that with some polishing and the addition of a band could be something. A song like Down And Out reminded me of solo Mike Heron type stuff with a bit of a Richard Thompson thing going on.
I think Early Nap may well be the song that has got Robert some Nikki Sudden comparisons and it is there again in the subject matter of Painkillers and Beer: a song dying to be given a good band backing it up so it can be compared to Pills and Booze, the old Green On Red classic. These two songs were drowning in a haze of drugs and all the better for it.
Inevitably when things are going down this path Robert ended up having The Revelations Of Louise. They were like a drunken reverie or is it more of a drunken fight - I'm not sure either way by the end of it. He needed Ice & Flowers to apologise or was that just for the loser in his closing number My Fight? Either way not a bad set at all, but I'd like to see him with a band to flesh out the sound.
After the break it was time for CHIARA GIACOBBE and her guitarist Marco Pagani. I believe they are both also part of Italian Americana band Lowlands and are over from Piedmont on Chiara's 'Walking In London' Tour of our finer establishments such as this one to promote Ready to Go, her debut EP on Rigo Records.
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The show opens with Ready To Go: a good heartfelt break up song about knowing that moment when you are ready to go away and move on to the next thing. For most of the song, it is just Chiara singing and Marco picking the tune out masterfully on the acoustic guitar until near the end Chiara picks up her violin and the song really takes off. Her voice is reminiscent of Isobel Monteiro of Drugstore's red wine-soaked purr and it works really well on this song.
From here on, most of the songs are instrumentals that Chiara introduces to help us out. Road Map had a really nice feel to it as they are both great musicians and the violin weaved in and out against Marco's at times somewhat careful plucking and strumming. Missing You had nothing to do with Duff Paddy thankfully and was gloriously dolorous, almost like her violin was crying for the missed loved one.
Scarlet could have brought up many emotions and those of the scarlet women would be well among them. It was haunting and bewitching. They followed that with a very cool version of the old Django Reinhardt via Debussy classic Nuages: a tune I heard far too often as a kid but while this wasn't like Django and Stephane Grappelli used to play it as it had a more modern feel to it while being nicely blue and doleful. They followed that with Waiting For You, a song about wondering if you are going to turn up or not.
The cover they did of Tomorrow's A Long Time was very cool and downbeat as if Chiara was trying to contemplate that there would be a tomorrow while Marco really added loads to it and almost made it sound like more of a Bert Jansch tune than a Dylan one.
They then closed the set with another Instrumental that had a wicked Violin part in it and seemed surprised to be called back for a well deserved encore. Maybe that was in part due to how loud many of the audience members had been while talking over them during the set. It hadn't been at all clear that many of them were listening to the music at all. Still, I was surprised that they chose to play the single Ready To Go for a second time. However good it sounded there is always something a bit worrying about acts that don't have an encore. Only a small quibble at the end of a very good set, however.
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