Mostly Autumn

The Crescent, York

22 June 2024

I'm planted right at the front and slightly to the right, which is the proper place to see Mostly Autumn from. My head tells me it's too close, I'll be dazzled by the backlighting, I won't get the best sound, my ears will complain about the drums tomorrow. But my heart tells me this is the only place to stand to see the best live band in the world today.

Henry Rogers starts the evening with the drum pattern of In for the Bite, and it stretches on, and on, while the rest of the band waits for Chris Johnson to sort out a problem with a monitor plug or something, and instead of stopping the song and restarting when it's fixed, Henry just keeps going, so when the band finally comes in my ears have gone completely numb from 257 bars of relentless solo drumming, and I just hear a wall of distorted guitar sound.

And it's absolutely awesome.

Any thought of hearing subtlety in the sound is completely out of the window, but it's ok, I accepted this would be a problem, and it's worth it to be caught up in the energy and the atmosphere this band puts across. But Mostly Autumn are also masters of dynamic shifts, not just between different songs but within the same song, and whenever there's a bit I really need to hear, the rest of the band drops the power and lets me hear it perfectly. I hear every flute solo, and every important vocal. And Andy Smith's resonant bass, which through a quirk of how I'm hearing the sound cuts through everything and almost becomes the lead instrument at times, which is very cool.

With no new material to present, the set list is not very different from last year's. It leans heavily on recent albums (you know that "recent" means after 2010, right?), it skips a lot that once would have been thought of as "essential", but dips into the past for some very welcome surprises. There's very little talking between songs, because with this band and this audience there isn't really much left to say. We know who they are and they know why we're here, and everything is understood even when left unsaid.

Iain Jennings' unmistakable keyboard intro to The Night Sky is possbly the biggest surprise of the night. I don't think I've heard it since 2015, and it's worth the entire trip to hear it again. Chris helpfully kneels down to play the acoustic guitar, specifically so I can see Angela play the low whistle solo behind him. Then she moves to the front to play the violin part (I mean on flute, obviously) right in front of me and this is the best concert I've ever seen.

Over two hours of music finishes with White Rainbow, an epic 20 minutes of power metal riffing leading to a climax of exhilarating, uplifting, pure joyfulness, and I'm starting to realise this could be my favourite Mostly Autumn song and that's ridiculous, how did that happen?

You know how it gets so late at night that you can't even see what you're putting on the page any more? That means I need to stop, even though I have many more thoughts, and I've got to say the final encore is Tonight because I don't think I've mentioned Olivia yet and she is magnificent.

Best concert I've ever ... did I say that already?