Nancy Berserk and Hellfire Orchestra

Sunday 13th January 2019
secret woodland location near Canterbury

This was supposed to be a kind of raucous punkrock new year special, sort of for Libby's birthday, featuring Hellfire and The Heathens (new local punk supergroup featuring the Holden Brothers and Rob Gambell). A couple of days before the event, Tom H warned me that The Heathens were VERY loud, and that the audience might need earplugs. I was considering a bulk purchase when (perhaps for the best) Rob had to cancel. So no Heathens. Fortunately, Nancy agreed to step in. She's only done a couple of gigs before but is extremely confident and has a great voice. The first half of her set was accompanied by Tom H on acoustic guitar (including covers of Jane's Addiction's "Slow Divers" and Neil Young's "On The Beach"). The second half featured her singing to her laptop, her own electronic arrangements, including a stunning original called "Angelfish" and a gorgeous cover of New Order's "Blue Monday" to finish. Here's a demo she's made of "Angelfish"...

...and here she is a couple of months earlier at Lily's Bistro:

Hellfire were on fire! It's been over six years since they were last up in the woods, so there were some songs as well as all the classics. They started with "Year of the Tiger". The new song "Ironworks" (the only one during which Jamie shed his guitar) stood out as borderline-avant-garde-sounding. Phil Self rocking out on electric guitar (Marc Ribot influences showing at times) and playing some super-fast mandolin, Billy Glinn raging on bass, and Stewy drumming (slightly muted by multiple teatowels). We had three sound engineers in the audience so no problem getting everything balance. Jamie's lyrics continue to leave me awestruck — what a writer! And his atonal snarl approach to singing suits the songs perfectly. After a couple of songs everyone was up and dancing until the encore (the sea shanty "Blow Boys Blow"). Mighty!