@alpaca.presents
by Brandon van der Berg @vdb.brandon
Sound Engineer for the night was Georgie
‘To The Moon’ is a quaint place. A cozy bar cookiecutter’d up with your grandmothers white wooden pantry doors, bathing you in a calm orange glow upon gaining admittance through it’s bowing lintel. Hugged by the deep navy walls that pass behind you and press you into the front or back. To be gazed upon unknowingly by the prying sun, or the other guests who opted against front row seats. (Like I always do because I’m a little socially-nervous babbit)
As people fold in, falling into their seats with eager knees and praying eyes they show intent in their arrival, with no lacking sense of community and respect for the themes of the night, brushed gently with the sounds of a busy city muffled by the corners of the stretched window at the back.
The night was an undeniable hit of honesty, truth, passion and serious f*cking strength. The vulnerability of the themes lead and delivered by unphased, roaringly inspiring women.
The night was a discussion of consent, and sensitive topics that surround it like S.A and R-word. (The words of which I have censored to not potentially surprise/upset readers and I hope that same respect for the themes, of which I have an overwhelming amount, is shown through my writing as best as I have intended)
Read about it below.
Eva Penney
Her friendly smiles are never unreciprocated by her consistently welcoming audience. As it stands Eva Penney is the first artist so far to have been published by us for a second time on this site and you can check out their previous one here.
Breaks from a chiming ambience subside to a warm but brisk “Hello, hello, hello!”.
Sunken eyelids slip down to the floor as a sombreness oozes through the cracks in her guitar and finds itself well received amongst a cushion of harmony as she begins to play. There are parts where nothing but the blunt serration of mourning and consolation cramps your focus and latches your brow, as if she had glued a thread to the summit of everyone’s noses and was puppeteering a group of leaning, un-talking heads.
Pun intended.
“This song Is about giving a mood ring to a boy I had a crush on to see how he felt about me… F*cking idiot! I could have just asked him?!”
Crowd Laughs
It is easy to find solace in it, something I think was shared amongst the room. Cured, sleepy melodies memry’n your mind back and forth between a moving, morish mound of happy gestures, culled by the flicker of a self-protective glance. Those heavy moments in your life, hinging on some debateable endearance you’ve convinced yourself is there because otherwise, the weight of them would be irrational and never satiated.
The drawn out talks she gives between songs are not at all boring or ‘too much’ like she frequently comments, it adds valuable personality to the set that is too often overlooked or deemed as undesirable especially when most crowds are quite happy listening to whatever you have to say, however you want to say it. As long as YOU aren’t bored, no one else will be, or in this case was.
Find her on Instagram or Spotify
For Fans Of Billie Marten, Do Nothing and Lianne La Havas
Poetry from Flo Simpson and Jo Casling
This Is a part of a live performance that we haven’t covered at all, and one I honestly haven’t experienced in person before. The gap between two musical performances being filled with a break for two poetic speakers to gift the stage and show to the audience, what the night is all about. As I don’t feel as though I’m in a position to criticize the covered poetry, for those pieces, I won’t. Rather I will highlight the original poet’s work where necessary, to allow you to revisit or discover.
The first poet, Flo Simpson.
She read poetry about “consenting, how to say no and exploring it through the personal experience of lots different people, men, women and how it can relate to different things.”
The first poem she read was the first poem she had ever read aloud to people as she announced, it was about a “personal experience she had a few years ago and it’s called ‘Flower Power’. From what was a first performance, I did not find the experience lacking at all, more so creatively structured, passionately spoken and with a greatly artistic use of language.
I felt it overwhelmingly important to listen first hand to a women’s experience in a world where it is too often ignored, overlooked or deemed as lesser just because corporate tory fat cats, beer-bellied bigots and Incels with lacklustre manhood like trying to be ‘Big Strong Men’ and in their stead show themselves for the small c*cked, scared, Neanderthalic *ssholes they really are, the laughing stock of their successor’s generations.
“A white lacey number on top,
It's Halloween and I’m in the 60s,
I’m fun free and 17.”
“Eyes Spinning in Sockets”
“I know I walked away, my body Intact”
The two main poets of which she read from I will Hyperlink below.
Frances Horovitz, a poet who was working in the early 70s/8s, an unconventional poet who was a women surrounded by men in a very male dominated field.
Siegfried Sassoon, “an English war poet who worked between 1886-1967.” Here is a poem about a boy in the trenches of WW1. She then provides a trigger warning for themes of suicide, which a few people took up to temporarily leave.
Find Flo Instagram
The Second Poet, Jo Casling.
She describes the original poetry as a linear progression through her life with some imagination thrown into what made for an engaging, raw and fluid piece of thoroughly enjoyable imagery.
There is an abundance of confidence, real grit and sharp blood to her words alongside well crafted, natural feeling and punctuated phrasing.
A series of stories, their interpretation left to yourself allowing you to fall though the pages as she loosely discarded them upon finishing each one.
I’ll say something for the people like me, who never read poetry, who don’t see it as their thing but are open to listening. Upon seeing her walk to the stage with an arguably thick handful of poetry, grasped tightly, I felt slightly intimidated by the quantity. I also know a few people who shared that same daunting curio, but each of us talked in depth following it’s performance and collectively agreed that THAT was absolutely nothing short of breathtakingly fantastic, and something I am sure you will objectively and thoroughly enjoy if you give it a chance and that is how you tell it is genuinely, good regardless of your own personal interests. The awe-ing hit behind those words, vulnerability spoken with no vulnerability is power and influence, something she held over that entire room for the duration of her flawless read.
Incredible and truly worthy of any good bookshelf.
“The Bells are ringing, we are not dead.”
Find her on Instagram
Holly Eve
Soaring drones of delicately loud stories.
A fantastic sense of dynamics, swelling and calming alongside two vocalists who really know how and when to elevate a song’s stripped back arrangement.
Her presence is still and quiet but satisfied. Her low, thick melodies smooth over the guitar to create something emotionally akin to The Twilight Saga (it’s a must-watch from me), those ringing adlibs experimenting with an atmospheric tinge of the beyond, slowly building while people watch longingly, home-sickly.
Something I haven’t seen before is her alchemic turning of a poem she liked, into a song. Your ordinary cover except not and a much cooler and creative way of portraying art you love in your own way.
“We would tune guitars randomly, pick poetry books and just sing them” – Holly reminiscing a favoured memory
Her vocal delivery is an elegantly delivered combination of watchfulness and grace, her face resonating meaning. When she flinches her head back and up it is the perfect image to portray the withdrawal of self, and owning the moment.
I’d like to comment on the attention to detail and genuine care Holly and the other performers/poets have as people and artists, multiple times they issued trigger warnings for sensitive themes that could potentially upset audience members and a few took them up on the offer as they would wait patiently for them to be out of earshot. I can’t speak for anyone about how they experienced the night, but I can guess that the exceptionally caring and healing environment made a pretty big difference to their evening.
She orchestrated the room of thickening voices to her final chorus. Strumming a canvas to her words, everyone that night collectively painted a version of that song that will and could never be sung again, making it truly unique and special, just like the night as a whole. A really spectacular use of the crowd that had everyone wholesomely smiling. Find her on Instagram Or Spotify For Fans Of Zero 7, Daughter, The Staves.
Comments