THIS IS THE KIT + HAYLEY SAVAGE – DE LA WARR PAVILION, BEXHILL-ON-SEA 31.5.21
With their dreamy and ethereal contemporary folk rock long championed on the likes of BBC Radio 6 Music, This Is The Kit completed recording of their fifth album, ‘Off Off On’ just as the pandemic lockdowns began in March 2020. The alias of Paris-based singer-songwriter Kate Stables (originally from Winchester in Hampshire), This Is The Kit is also the name of the band she fronts. Ongoing travel restrictions have made promotion of the album difficult, and the current string of socially distanced live shows in London, Bexhill and Bristol is the first time the full band has been back together to play the new material.
Originally part of a tour booked for March this year, the Bexhill date at the iconic De La Warr Pavilion was actually brought forward to January as two reduced capacity shows, before being rescheduled again to 31st May. The venue is now well practised at putting on socially distanced events, and an array of comfy sofas, along with various configurations of tables and chairs, is spread out around the large hall. Going out to live events is still a bit of a novelty, and there’s a general buzz of anticipation before the show begins.
First up is Hayley Savage, a singer songwriter based in Hastings. “Dreams do come true,” she posted on social media, sharing confirmation that she had landed the support slot for tonight. She seems genuinely delighted to be here, if a little overwhelmed. A tall figure in a striped shirt, with long blonde hair, she stands centre stage with an acoustic guitar. Her playing technique is classic and pleasing: thumbing bass notes whilst alternating strums and delightful finger picked arpeggios, and her voice is wonderfully soulful and expressive. Musically, it’s a downbeat sort of folk, with the occasional hint of alt-country, with heartfelt lyrics. Second song, ’I Know Now’ is the stand out number for me, with a spine-tingling chord progression through the chorus. The half hour set passes most agreeably.
Hayley Savage setlist (7pm show):
‘All Along The Railings’; ‘I Know Now’; ‘Really Not That Deep’; ‘Tuesday’; ‘Weak’; ‘The Starting And The Leaving’
The stage is set up for a four-piece, so the horn section from last night’s live-streamed gig from the Barbican clearly hasn’t made it to the seaside. No matter: it’ll doubtless be a great This Is The Kit show with the classic lineup. There’s a loud cheer as the band takes to the stage, although the first number, ‘Riddled With Ticks’ from 2017 album ‘Moonshine Freeze’ is performed solo by Kate, with the other players crouching in anticipation. It’s a beautiful opening, with a haunting vocal line accompanied by jangling guitar arpeggios.
The band are all in for ‘Bashed Out’, from the 2015 album of the same name. House left is Neil Smith, wielding a turquoise Fender Jazzmaster with a matching amp, shaven headed and sporting a Snoopy T-shirt with a “Nope. Not today” motif. Behind a small kit in natural finish, decorated with weather forecast symbols, is Jamie Whitby-Coles, baseball hatted and flitting deftly around the toms with a set of Timpani mallets. Centre stage on lead vocals is Kate Stables, dark hair piled into a loose topknot, playing a red Fender Musicmaster with a white scratch plate. House right is the familiar figure of Rozi Plain, an indie folk star in her own right, thumbing a red and black Burns bass.
Title track of last year’s album, ‘Off Off On’ requires banjo, which involves a lot of tuning and a lot of chat from Kate to fill the gap. We learn it’s a zither banjo, made in Birmingham in the 1920s, and it’s becoming apparent that they don’t readily stay in tune. The song, when it finally gets going, is floaty and magical. There’s another self conscious pause changing guitar, this time to a red semi acoustic. Kate compares the reverend silence to a Quaker meeting, and the next number, the superb ‘Coming To Get You Nowhere’, is suitably spiritual and transcendent, with guitars weaving amongst the vocal interplay between Kate and Rozi.
We’re back to the banjo for ‘This Is What You Did’, another gorgeous number that’s well worth the wait through another long tuning interlude. The main riff bubbles away while Neil wrangles some freakily otherworldly guitar sounds.
“I’m feeling quite woozy,” Kate admits, tuning up yet again. Whilst endearing in some ways, the long and awkward gaps do break the spell of the wonderfully dreamy music somewhat. With a reduced door take, costs obviously need to be kept down, but there are instrument changes for almost every song, and this is a band in desperate need of a guitar and banjo tech.
For the most part the set is a mix of tracks from the last two albums, and there’s some exquisite material to choose from. The shimmering arpeggios of ‘Carry Us Please’ sparkle like sunlight on a bubbling stream, drifting the listener into a trance-like state as delicate moans of guitar oscillate above, sounding almost like they’re playing backwards. ‘Was Magician’ is equally languid and relaxing, with Kate and Rozi’s vocals meshing beautifully. There’s a slight vocal hiccup at the start of ‘No Such Thing’, but Kate holds it together, flinging out a cute celebratory side kick as the rhythm section comes in and the number gets fully underway.
The gaps between songs seem to be getting longer, and the anecdotal digressions more rambling, but having been encouraged to heckle, the audience starts calling out requests. A shout for ‘Earthquake’ from 2013 album ‘Wriggle Out The Restless’ seems to catch Kate’s imagination. It means another re-tune, but it turns out to be an absolute treat. Driven along by an insistent bluesy bass riff, the “oohs” of the vocal are punctuated by flourishes of Neil’s tremolo guitar, given a bit of extra wobble with the whammy bar.
The solo on ‘Moonshine Freeze’ soars majestically, and the lightly skipping guitar riff of ‘Found Out’ is familiar as the opener of the current album. The set closes with ‘Keep Going’, an exhortation to tenacity that could have been written for the current crazy times.
Leave the audience wanting more is a popular maxim for entertainers, and quite frankly I could have sat through another whole set of this. It’s great to be back attending gigs, and particularly satisfying to hear material from one of the standout albums of last year finally played live.
This Is The Kit:
Kate Stables – vocals, guitar, banjo
Rozi Plain – bass, vocals
Neil Smith -guitar
Jamie Whitby-Coles -drums, vocals
This Is the Kit setlist (8pm):
‘Riddled With Ticks’; ‘Bashed Out’; ‘Off Off On’; ‘Coming To Get You Nowhere’; ‘This Is What You Did’; ‘Empty No Teeth’; ‘Carry Us Please’; ‘Was Magician’; ‘No Such Thing’; ‘Bulletproof’; ‘Earthquake’; ‘Moonshine Freeze’; ‘Found Out’; ‘Keep Going’
