I tottered along to see the undeniably fine Turin Brakes the other night and before setting off, I remembered I’d done a review of the first time I’d seen them, nearly a decade and a half ago (one day after their debut album was released). It was a harsh reminder of just how old and crusty I’m getting when I contemplated the scary possibility of there being some eager young teenage fans also in the audience who weren’t even born when I first caught them live.

Once inside the Brudenell, I shuffled my way to the front to secure a favourable vantage point (with the other keen fans) and, sure enough, the first clutch of adjacent attendees my aged eyes clocked were three bashfully excitable young lasses who couldn’t have been any older than 14 and, subsequently, were indeed very likely to have been swimming in their daddies’ plums when I cobbled together this wee write-up, that was published in some local gig listings mag:

TURIN BRAKES/ ED HARCOURT

Leeds Rocket, 6th March 2001

The current vogue for proper bands playing proper songs with proper instruments continued here tonight as Ed Harcourt and his accomplices coyly took the stage and bared their musical souls to the predominantly male, Caffrey’s-quaffing, balding throng.

During Harcourt’s half-hour, just as on his current mini album, ‘Maplewood’, Ed and his band make a pleasant enough sound which, despite the welcome embellishment of an intermittent trumpet parp here and there (surely employed in a vain attempt to make every song a clone of Love’s ‘Alone Again Or’), fails to be neither energising nor particularly memorable.

Later, our Ed deflects any potential vocal comparisons to Fran Healy by singing a line about burning all his Travis tapes and, ivory tinkler that he is, begins a frustratingly neck-straining ‘sit-down-&-play’ theme for the evening which is upheld when Olly Knights and Gale Paridjanian, the all-strummin’, all-singin’duo that conceived Turin Brakes, walk on stage to park their arses in their chairs.

As each track from the wonderfully luscious debut, ‘The Optimist LP’ is peeled  away, one can’t help but note that Knights’ voice and stage presence is, spookily, the closest anybody’s come to successfully working the late Jeff Buckley’s mojo for him, on his behalf. That’s no lazy association either; as the acoustic guitar interplay and the honeydew harmonies illustrate, their Radox bath-like body of work really is that good.

At the moment, the one thing more comforting than listening to Turin Brakes’ emotive handiwork is the thought that there might well be hundreds of other talented, David Gray-literate kids, busily beavering away in British bedrooms, determined to craft songs as warmly received as the ones laid bare here tonight. Am I being ‘The Optimist’ now? Let’s hope not.

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Well… not much has changed in fourteen years with regard to Turin Brakes still being prodigously talented and a wondrously engaging live prospect. The Brudenell show (on February Friday 13th!) was one of only two gigs the band have planned this year and, oddly enough for a London-based outfit, the other was also in West Yorkshire, at Hebden Bridge Trades Club the following night. Mmmmmm… Most queer.

Aside from their wonderful music, the most captivating thing about this 2015 gig was their bassist, Eddie Myer. I liked him as soon as he walked onstage. His excellent thick beard, his fantastically fulsome web of hair, his slim frame and well-toned arms (I’m guessing he does yoga!) and, not entirely in keeping with what you might associate da ‘Brakes with, he had some cool, tip-top rock god moves n’all: he wore skinny black jeans and Converse pumps, which did a leisurely jig you could really dig, on more than one occasion he had his FOOT ON THE MONITOR, PEOPLE..!!! and he was proudly sporting a Polymer Records t-shirt (which you must know is the fictional label Spinal Tap were signed to, who Artie Fufkin worked for)…

The band pulled out all the crowd-pleasing stops with stand-out tracks old & new, they did a corking, strung-out stoner version of ‘Chim Chim Cheree’ and, perhaps inspired by Myers’ Woodstock look, they often locked down into loose jamming mode, giving the term ‘southern rock’ a more London/Brighton meaning than a Georgian/Texan one. I reckon it’ll be one of the most prog gigs I’ll see this year (and I’m off to see Dutch legends Focus next month). I mean, listen… this song practically is Pink Floyd purity (particularly on the studio album version)… and there’s that bassist’s very same Polymer teesh:

One minor annoyance was the drummer inexplicably not unlocking the snare on his drum during the quieter parts, which caused it to rattle with the vibration, as if someone was pouring dried rice over every song. Overall though, my girlfriend and I had a cracking night and it was nice to see them in a venue as cosy as the Brudenell, witnessing how they’ve lost none of the wonder that had charmed me way back in 2001. Another night where it felt good to be able to proudly proclaim; ‘We Were Here’.