Northwest Gig Highlights – June 2015

Fans of a knotty story are spoilt for choice this month with the arrival of three fine, idiosyncratic songwriters: Waxahatchee, Natalie Prass and Jenny Hval, all cut from a very different cloth, but each a commanding vocalist and lyricist.

Hval’s latest record, Apocalypse, girl – out on Sacred Bones this month – is an intensely delivered, multi-faceted deconstruction of issues around sexuality, capitalism and femininity. Possessing a voice of quite startling virtuosity that’s underpinned by a frankness in her lyrics, the Norwegian has previously risen gracefully to the challenge of supporting the likes of St. Vincent and Swans. She gets to take centre stage at Gullivers in Manchester on 11 Jun (and you can read our chat with her on page 12). 

Katie Crutchfield aka Waxahatchee first caught the attention of this writer with her second album, Cerulean Salt, a collection of naked arrangements for sleep-dipped guitar and febrile voice released in 2013. Her most recent, Ivy Tripp, is both softer and more complex, the broader sonic palette serving to soothe her earlier rawness. The Ruby Lounge (12 Jun) doesn't quite feel the right setting for her – but then, the ideal place would probably be around a fire at camp somewhere deep within the American wild, so, y'know. (She also plays Leeds Brudenell Social Club on 17 Jun.)

Natalie Prass indirectly made headlines recently when tourmate Ryan Adams took to the stage in a spotted dress, announced himself as 'Natalie Sass' and played what would have been her support set for his show in Copenhagen (there'd been a problem with her flight). Adams' fervent championing is part of a fast-growing chorus of praise for the Richmond, Virginia-hailing singer, who has said she nearly gave up on music before a friend suggested she seek out an old schoolmate, one Matthew E. White, and his house-band/production collective, Spacebomb. Sure enough, they hit it off, and Prass's debut album became Spacebomb's sixth release. A strangely neither out-of-time nor contemporary-sounding record with dewy chamber pop arrangements and precise little licks of horn, it is suspended somewhere between Joanna Newsom and Joni; the concert hall and the lost highway (you can understand the connection to Adams). Prass brings this classy project to The Deaf Institute on 25 Jun – one of only four UK dates. (For more antique American gleam, note that Howe Gelb's elder statesmen of folk grit, Giant Sand, are coming to Liverpool St George's Hall on 3 Jun.)

If three shows from three fascinating women in one month isn't enough for you, then we have a few more suggestions. Back in the early noughties, Six Organs of Admittance was a name uttered in the same breath as the likes of – with increasing inaccuracy – Ray Raposa's Castanets, Devendra Banhart and (very) early Phosphorescent, names from the so-called 'freak folk' movement, the label of which somewhat underserved a huge range of musical output and odd personalities. Hexadic is solo guitarist Ben Chasny's most specific project to date, employing a chance-based system of composition of his own devising (and which you can now read more about at sixorgans.com, Chasny having recently completed a book and a set of playing cards that will help others to make music by the same method). If you're heading to Birmingham's Supersonic Festival, you can hear him deliver a talk on combinational systems like this one; his Gullivers date on 14 Jun – and Leeds Brudenell Social Club on 16 Jun – will be all about the music, but we're sure you can mither him about secret sonic codes after these shows nonetheless.

Those for whom Six Organs' foundational sound of scorched, Fahey-esque guitar remains their favourite of his modes will be heading out again two nights later for James Blackshaw at Islington Mill (16 Jun). The first date in programming collective Fat Out's two-year residency project at the Mill – which they're calling Burrow – brings the Takoma-influenced musician to the venue's newly redesigned main room alongside the opening of a new exhibition by artists Jermyn MTK and Tasha Whittle, who will be performing in the gallery space next door. Almost as prolific as Chasny, Blackshaw has ten albums' worth of material to draw on, so while he'll likely be prioritising material from his more song-based current album, Summoning Suns, you can also hope for a survey of his beautifully revolving, constellating fingerstyle guitar work.

A quick mention, too, for outgoing Mancunian progressive rockers Cyril Snear, who’ll be playing their farewell show at Soup Kitchen on 6 Jun. The time-signature exploring riffniks fall into our own admittedly subjective bracket, ‘Should’ve Been Bigger’. They’ll be missed.

Two outsiders of different – almost opposite – stripes visit the Northwest this month in the form of Ariel Pink and Dan Deacon. It’s hard to know what you’re ever going to get with Ariel Pink live; the lo-fi pop curio can be by turns incredibly frustrating and genius. When he hits his peak, though – as you hope he will at District in Liverpool (13 Jun) and the Brudenell in Leeds (14 Jun) – he’s more than capable of sending audiences on a transformative trip. Deacon is a far safer pair of hands. A noise-pop artist from New York who makes a game of breaking down the barrier between audience and performer, his shows frequently take on a form of communal catharsis. Dancing guaranteed at Islington Mill (17 Jun).

Last but not least, we've bigged them up in this column the last two issues already thanks to their seemingly never-ending tour, but go see Young Fathers, yeah? The Kazimier, Liverpool, 7 June. Over and out.

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DO NOT MISS
Outfit, The Kazimier, Liverpool, 18 June

With their stunning second album Slowness, Outfit have both sidestepped and embraced all those music journo cliches. They’ve avoided the sophomore slump, made a step up, whatever you want to call it. A record driven by the geographic separation of both frontman Andrew Hunt from his wife and the band from each other, it eschews much of the disco and house grooves that inflected their debut, Performance, in lieu of refinement, reflection and hair-raising emotive pop grandeur.

Live, the band are running to an increasingly light schedule – this will be the first show they’ve performed in the Northwest since last autumn’s new material preview at Gullivers in Manchester. It’s a by-product of the five-piece splitting themselves into two countries and three cities, which gives this one-off homecoming show an added sense of occasion – not least as Outfit are becoming ever more certain to go down as one of Liverpool’s most respected bands of the new millennium.