Mostly Autumn, Crewe

I first saw Mostly Autumn a few months back in Manchester, and immediately wanted to see them again; they were that good. Unfortunately I couldn't make it to any dates on their November "V" tour due to other commitments, so the next opportunity I had was their Christmas gig at the Limelight Club in the old railway town of Crewe.

Before the show, I met up in the bar at Crewe station with an old friend, Crewe resident Sasha, who I haven't seen for something like a year. An hour or so (and a couple of beers) later, I set off into the windswept and rainy streets of Crewe in search of the venue, the location of which I had the only the vaguest of ideas. Fortunately The Limelight Club turned out to be roughly in the area I though it was, and I managed to locate it without getting lost.

The Limelight is one of those warren-like clubs, with a maze of twisty passages all alike leading to the main concert hall; I suspect the internal layout must have been designed by someone who used to write Dungeons and Dragons adventures; all that was missing was the neo-otyugh by the bar. Unlike some clubs I've attended, they do serve decent beer; unfortunately Mostly Autumn don't do drum solos.

There's always something special at a packed gig in a small club with a great band, especially when much of the crowd is made up from hard core fans. Tonight was no exception. Mostly Autumn hit the stage at about half-past nine before an expectant crowd, and certainly did not disappoint.

Mostly Autumn sit at the opposite end of the progressive rock spectrum to bands such as Dream Theater or King Crimson; they're not about complex time signatures and high energy technical virtuosity that blurs into white noise. Instead they're about atmospheres and melodies, evoking the wide open spaces of the Yorkshire moors, still classed as 'Progressive' because their rich sound is nevertheless an order of magnitude more complex that the fashionable three-chord stuff that seems to pass as 'rock' nowadays. Pink Floyd's Richard Wright is a big fan.

Just to get people worried, only five of the seven appeared onstage for the opening number, 'Return of the King' from the "Music Inspired by Lord of the Rings" album, with Bryan Josh singing. But missing members Heather Findlay and Angela Goldthorpe made a dramatic entrance at the end of the song, and they stormed straight into 'Caught in a Fold'. After that they proceeded with song after song with little or no stage announcements. With a short interval, they played well over two hours of superb music, ranging from Floydian atmospherics and soaring epics through Tull-like hard rockers to folk-rock instrumentals showcasing Angela Goldthorpe's flute playing.

Much like the last show I saw, the setlist drew heavily from the recent albums "Passengers" and "The Last Bright Light". They still played the highlights from the first two albums, such as 'Spirit of Autumn Past', 'Evergreen', 'The Last Climb' and 'Heroes Never Die', with it's echoplexed guitar reminding me a lot of the late lamented Twelfth Night. An instrumental section in the middle of the set included 'Shindig', with Angela's flute playing what had originally been the violin part. They also played one new song, 'Heart Life', presumably from their forthcoming "Storms over Still Water".

Being two days before Christmas, the band treated us to some special Christmas encores. First was a spine-tingling rendition of the traditional carol 'Silent Night', sung solo by Heather. Then came a version of Greg Lake's 'I Believe in Father Christmas', and Slade's 'Merry Christmas Everybody, sung by guitarist Liam Davidson (accompanied by most of the crowd), wearing an elf's hat with Noddy ears. You can hardly accuse them of taking themselves too seriously with that one. They followed that with 'Fairytale in New York'. Finally, just in case anyone had forgotten they're not a pub cover band, they closed with the soaring epic 'Mother Nature', which has become their signature song, summing up everything that's great about the band fifteen minutes.

Setlist:
The Return of the King/ Caught in a Fold/ The Dark Before the Dawn/ Something in Between/ Evergreen/ Half the Mountain/ Close your Eyes/ Simple Ways/ Passengers

The Last Climb/ Distant Train/ Answer the Question/ Shrinking Violet/ Heroes Never Die/ The Spirit of Autumn Past/ Out of the Inn/ Shindig/ Never the Rainbow/ Heart Life

Encores
Silent Night/ I Believe in Father Christmas/ Merry Christmas Everybody/ Fairytale of New York/Mother Nature