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Review: Martha Tilston, The Jam Jar – ‘Pure and majestic’
Stepping out onto the stage, supporting the sublime, Bristol-born, Martha Tilston, Nathan Ball surveys the odd, rag-tag seating arrangements at the front of The Jam Jar and hopes that “you’re sitting comfortably”.
The chairs have just appeared, people getting cosy, ready to luxuriate as two wonderful artists apply musical balm for the troubled soul.
Ball is a fantastic guitarist and songwriter. His voice is as warm as a much-loved blanket, Let Me In and One Last Song tapping the meandering wanderings of a windswept poet.
is needed now More than ever
There is nature and people, normal life and an easy telling of everyday tales. Ball is the perfect opening act for Tilston’s mermaid shimmer.
Anyone with a passing interest in folk music (and an Amazon Prime account) can’t have failed to be beguiled by the lovely film, The Tape.
Martha Tilston’s drama about Cornwall, creativity, disillusionment and love has racked up thousands and thousands of views and has, arguably, exposed her to a much greater audience than just dedicated Folkies.
The audience at The Jam Jar wrapped itself around her, embraced her with a fierce, unconditional love.
We Are Here Now, taken from her latest album Luminous, is a euphoric coming together, an invitation to gather, a celebration of community.
Tilston’s voice is an incredible thing, as pure and majestic as any of those that may have been fringed with tassels in the late 60s. She would have fitted right in at Woodstock, would have travelled to San Francisco with flowers in her hair.
Neatly bookending the set is True Nature, also from Luminous, sung completely unamplified. With its refrain of “I want to meet you here”, it feels as though the evening runs full circle. Tilston encircling us in the warmest of hugs. It was not the first goose-bumping moment.
No Separation simply stopped the world. Joined by a handful of Bristol’s glorious Murmuration Choir, this hymn to the natural world sent shivers across a sea of smiling faces.
As all of the voices joined, a great swell of joy threatened to cascade down the stairs and out into the dark Bristol streets. A slow sway, great green branches reaching out to overwhelm the tarmac. Tilston’s love of nature effortlessly defeating the cold, the dark, the harsh.
Equally overwhelming was the first cover version of the evening. Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U, complete with Murmurations, was slowed and precise.
Rather than tear-filled and desperate, Tilston’s version was celebratory. She has a remarkable ability to take a single moment and make it entirely precious, to hold it up and watch as her light reflects and refracts.
Seagull is an exploration of the simple giddiness of life, the head-spinning fun that can be had. Matt Tweed’s mandolin and Matt Kelly’s thumping Cajon propelling a hair-flinging Tilston into huge, care-free strums. It is the sound of distilled happiness. A concentrated smile.
Even a cover of Portishead’s Glory Box is full of ecstasy rather than agony. Rather than being wracked, Tilston almost seems to relish being a “temptress”, there’s a wriggle to her shoulders as her reverb-drenched voice glistens. More goose-bumps.
There is no doubt that Martha Tilston has the most beautiful voice but what she has above all else is an openhearted honesty, an unreserved love of life.
On Nomad Blood, you can almost smell the campfire smoke, see the starlight, you are swept away with simple outdoor revelry.
As the audience joins in on the chorus and Tweed’s double bass tumbles about, it is easy to picture Tilston smiling, head back, arms outstretched, bathed in sunlight.
There are no sharp edges here, nothing mean or horrible. Tilston and her band may be comfortable but there were moments when you wished she could sing forever. You wished that you could always live in Tilston’s world.
Main photo: Gavin McNamara
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