Heather Findlay

Lantern Theatre, Sheffield

28 March 2025

The Lantern Theatre is a great venue: an actual seated theatre, unobtrusively tucked away in a quiet residential street a mile or two from the city centre. It's very tiny, only about 60 seats, but they are great seats with a perfect view of the well-lit stage, and the sound system is perfect for the room. It's not sold out tonight, but there's a respectable crowd, with several familiar faces but also some people who tell me they have never seen Heather before.

After a support set from Robyn Gair (a great voice and exceptional guitar playing; would see again), Heather takes the stage alone, with just an acoustic guitar. It's effectively the launch gig for her new album, Wildflower, officially released today (though I imagine that many of us in the audience have had it in our hands for a few weeks now). It's an album which is (almost entirely) just Heather's voice and guitar. The most stripped-down, back-to-basics album she's ever released, which translates perfectly to being performed in this one voice, one guitar live format.

She doesn't sing all of the album, probably only about half of it, which leaves plenty of space in her 90+ minute set to dip into her back catalogue, generally interleaving something old with something new. And the new hold up very strongly against the songs I have already loved for years. Wildflower itself is an instant favourite, with an infectious refrain that I can't stop singing to myself all the way home. But some of the songs that come later in the set are truly breathtaking. The one song I thought she wouldn't play is Still Burning, as it's a vocal duet with Troy Donockley (the only thing on the album that isn't 100% Heather). But, incredibly, she sings it, both parts in two different vocal registers, and it actually sounds better than on the album. Vocally, Heather is still incredible, still the best singer in rock today, and the best in any other genre she tackles, too. Even with a slight cough bothering her tonight, she works around it to deliver a beautiful performance, wrapped in her customary warm and chatty stage personality.

Her style changes from song to song. She can sound country, rock'n'roll, folky, mediaeval, you name it and Heather can sing like it. Among the new and old songs, she reads some short poems from the book she published a few years ago. And for a couple of songs she puts the guitar down and sings completely unaccompanied. This gig literally showcases everything she can do, and it's simply amazing. One new song (so new it's not on the album), Scarlet to Black, is a mix of spoken dialogue and a refrain sung in French, and it might be my favourite part of the entire evening.

The big mystery that I can't stop thinking about all evening is why there's a piano on the stage. I know Heather plays piano, but it's very rare for her to play it live—I've only seen it once, and I've seen a lot of her concerts. And this one doesn't have a microphone stand set up, so I'm intrigued as to how she will manage to play it and sing. Maybe she has a guest pianist? Well, yes she does. For the final song of the set, the beautiful and moving May It Be, her son joins her to play the piano, and makes a great job of it, playing like a pro even though he's only... 16, I think?

She seems to think she's hit the curfew, and after that final song she suggests she won't do an encore. In fact, I think that song was supposed to be the encore, moved into the main set to beat the clock. But the promoter comes on stage and calls her back, promising that she can sing for as long as she wants to (none of us disagree). This challenges her for a brief period while she scans her iPad for something she hasn't done yet. I already know what she hasn't done yet, and to my immense relief she figures it out and ends on a perfectly satisfying medley of (you already know too, right?) Evergreen, Shrinking Violet, and I Am Snow.

The perfect end to the best concert I have ever seen.