The quandary is this. Middlesbrough singer Amelia Coburn made one of my favourite albums of last year, her debut, Between the Moon and the Milkman, and I hear she’s playing live near me on the south coast, not something that happens every day.
Then I learn the gig is supporting Jim Moray (pictured below left), a much more established folk singer, originally from Staffordshire. So, I check out his music. It’s not my bag. But, sometimes, in concert these things persuade…
The short of it is that, live, Moray is still not for me. An accomplished producer outside his own work (Art Brut, Blair Dunlop and others), he’s built a respectable career in the classic folk mould, digging deep into the archives of song collecting. Academically knowledgeable around his material, he explains each song’s background in detail, before playing it on guitar or keyboard. The quiet, mostly older crowd, are rapt. I am not, but it feels, on this occasion, mean-spirited to write a review, given I didn’t come to see him and don’t appreciate his music. So, I offer one of his videos below. You can make your own mind up. But I will focus on the half-hour set of Amelia Coburn.
She appears onstage promptly at 8.00 PM, offers a quick “Hello”, and, playing her trademark baritone ukulele, goes straight into her first song, "When the Tide Rolls In". Clad in a long-skirted, sleeveless black dress, her dark hair long and parted, delicate of features, a young mid-twenties, she gives her album opener (and its most immediate song) a committed performance that immediately holds the attention.
There is something gracefully pre-Raphaelite about her appearance but she genially punctures any such assumptions by asking if anyone has been on Tinder. There is silence so she suggests Tinder might be better in Brighton than where she lives, and explains how her next song, “Nodding Dog”, is about a period of her life when she was “getting walked over by these proper mingers”. Her accent is richly Teeside, which adds to the heft of the song. “The notches on the bedpost were like names carved on a tree/You drew an Etch-a-Sketch heart, just to shake up, and wipe clean”. Her voice is a crystal clear emotive instrument.
Next is a song about her native Middlesbrough, a city she calls home, clearly loves at some level, but finds stifling. Delivered with her usual precise enunciation, its lyrics could be for anyone frustrated and feeling trapped in their hometown. Shaded pink by the neon Komedia sign behind her, she delivers an acapella section halfway through, using the ukulele as percussion.
“See Saw” is, perhaps, her most formally folk number, in that it has a gothic fairytale aspect. Before it, she tells us she was a “weird child”, drawn to Edgar Allen Poe and Daphne Du Maurier, expanding on this before dryly announcing, “I am a pretentious twat”, to laughter.
There is a full house for her set and, following a new number about “vinegar Valentines”, the Victorian tradition of sending 14th February cards to people you don’t like, she encourages rhythmic clapping as backing for her final song, “Oh Captain Guide Me Home”. The hand-slapping pulse is leaden but she lifts the mood, the song’s subtly flamenco-ish inner rhythms making me want to clap double-time above my head.
Then she says, “Thank you”, and is gone. Buy her album. Catch her live. She’s a true talent, right at the start of things, ripe and ready for wider discovery.
Below: watch a video for "Sounds of the Earth" by Jim Moray
