Review: Katherine Priddy, Strange Brew – ‘Sweetness, sass and gothic romance’

There’s probably some kind of a law that says that you must go and see some folk music on May Day. If there’s not, there should be.

It’s fortunate then that Birmingham-born singer-songwriter Katherine Priddy starts her tour on May Day, in Bristol. Her latest album, The Pendulum Swing, is a glorious thing and the combination of her beautiful voice, fantastic songs and a pleasantly buzzy audience make this May evening irresistible.

Katherine on stage at Strange Brew – photo: Gavin McNamara

Unlike her short tour of record stores earlier this year, Priddy is playing with a band this evening. Her guitarist George Boomsma starts things off as gentle acoustic support too. Playing several tracks from his latest album, The Promise of Spring, he is perfectly poised.

A bit Nick Drake, a bit melancholy scouse folk-pop, he has a high voice and a fine ear for a warm harmony. Johnny Walker Guy is a country tune for a rainy English day while How High the Mountain is sung acapella to pin-drop silence. It’s gorgeous.

The Pendulum Swing is an album that celebrates home and family and, if you listen carefully tonight, you can hear the tick and hum of a house that Katherine Priddy, Boomsma and violinist Harry Fausing Smith create. All night there is warmth and care and love.

First House on the Left is a bit of rose-tinted loveliness for the house that Priddy grew up in. She is nervous, almost whispering the words so as not to disturb the ghosts that hide in her rooms, but Boomsma gently cradles her, adding harmonies and support.

By Does She Hold You Like I Did the nerves have gone, replaced by a Kirsty MacColl-like sass. Priddy’s pain of separation is buoyed by violin and electric guitar washes: her voice swells, becomes bigger, more confident. Whoever this is written for starts to look a fool.

Katherine getting ready for her May Day show at Strange Brew – photo: Katherine Priddy

It is her voice that makes this evening remarkable – flowing like a stream on Boat on a River, scraping at the heavens on Icarus. At times it’s feather light, blown by the breeze; at others it’s deep and aching with confidentiality – a late night, red-wine-stained confessional.

Northern Sunrise is as soft as summer rain, as bright as a late May morning, the three voices harmonising as the violin dances around them. It’s a simple love song but it’s full of hope: “We don’t fall in love, we rise.”

In the hands of someone else some of these songs could be a little syrupy but you never think that Priddy is anything other than honest. She is heartfelt with an eye on the nuance of a family relationship: Father Of Two is about her father, Walnut Shell, her twin brother. Both are simply lovely; sentimentality is kept at bay with a cheeky twinkle and an obvious love.

In contrast to the familial sweetness, there’s the darkly beautiful Selah – a gothic romance, all All About Eve crushed velvet and twinkly stars. Wolf, her first single from 2018, is just as romantic, with just as many gothic echoes. Here, her beautiful folk voice and acoustic picking forge a wholly classic, wonderfully contemporary moment.

Priddy fashions her own home and decorates it with tapestries made of similes, hangs it with the haziest of golden lights and allows life into every room.

If May Day is made for folk music, then Priddy is the sunshine that bursts through the clouds, the hopeful earth where wonderful things grow. Tonight, she effortlessly makes a house a home.

Read next: 

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• Jack in the Green makes his annual outing around Bristol