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More Things To Do in York and beyond, as York welcomes York to York for the weekend. List No. 67, from The Press

Enjoy free admission to York Art Gallery’s Young Gainsborough: Rediscovered Landscape Drawings exhibition as part of York Residents’ Festival. Booking required. Picture: Charlotte Graham

YORK attracts 8.4 million visitors, but this weekend you are invited to be a tourist in your own city, as Charles Hutchinson highlights.

Festival of the week: York Residents’ Festival, today and tomorrow

MORE than 70 events, attractions and offers make up this weekend’s York Residents’ Festival, with the offers continuing all week.

Organised by Make It York, this annual festival invites all York residents with a valid YorkCard to “explore the city and be a tourist for the weekend”, one card per person. 

Pre-booking is required for some highlights of a festival that takes in museums, theatres, galleries, churches, hidden gems, historic buildings, food and drink and shops.  For more details, visit: visityork.org/residents-festival.

Tall storey in Tall Stories’ The Smeds And The Smoos at York Theatre Royal this weekend

Children’s show of the week: The Smeds And The Smoos, York Theatre Royal, today, 2.30pm and 4.30pm; tomorrow, 10.30am and 1.30pm

SOAR into space with Tall Stories’ exciting new stage adaptation of writer Julia Donaldson and illustrator Axel Scheffler’s joyful tale of star-crossed aliens.

On a far-off planet, Smeds and Smoos cannot be friends. Nevertheless, when a young Smed and Smoo fall in love, they promptly zoom off into space together.

How will their families get them back? Find out in an interplanetary adventure for everyone aged three upwards, full of music and laughter, from the company that delivered The Gruffalo and Room On The Broom on stage. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Bedtime story: Ian Ashpitel and Jonty Stephens as Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise in Eric & Ern

Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be; it’s better in: Eric & Ern, York Theatre Royal, Tuesday and Wednesday, 7.30pm

IAN Ashpitel and Jonty Stephens bring you sunshine in their uncanny portrayal of comedy duo Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise in a show that has been touring for more than five years.

Combining renditions of famous comedy sketches with contemporary references, Eric & Ern contains some of the first new writing in the Morecambe & Wise  style in more than in 30 years. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk.

Abstract collage, by Peter Schoenecker, at Pocklington Arts Centre

Exhibition of the week outside York: Peter Schoenecker, A New Way Of Looking, Pocklington Arts Centre, until February 19

PETER Schoenecker’s mixed-media artworks open Pocklington Arts Centre’s 2022 season of exhibitions in the studio.

On show are watercolours, acrylics and lino prints by the Pocklington artist, a former graphic designer, who is inspired by the landscape and seascape textures and lighting in and around his Yorkshire home.

“My aim is usually to create a mood or atmosphere using colour or black and white,” he says. “Switching between media keeps me interested and innovative, hopefully bringing a freshness to the work.”

Echo & The Bunnymen’s Ian McCulloch and Will Sergeant: From Liverpool to Leeds on Wednesday

Gig of the week outside York: Echo & The Bunnymen, Leeds O2 Academy, Wednesday, doors, 7pm

AHEAD of the February 18 vinyl reissue of their 1985 compilation Songs To Learn & Sing, Liverpool legends Echo & The Bunnymen play plenty of those songs and more besides in Leeds (and at Sheffield City Hall the night before).

Available for the first time since that initial release, the “Best Of” cherry picks from their first four albums with the single Bring On The Dancing Horses as the icing on top. On tour, vocalist Ian McCulloch and guitarist Will Sergeant will be leading a band now in their 44th year, still too cool to be called a heritage act. Box office: gigsandtours.com/tour/echo-and-the-bunnymen.

Granny (Isabel Ford) and Ben (Justin Davies) in the Crown Jewels-stealing scene in Birmingham Stage Company’s Gangsta Granny

Family show of the week: Birmingham Stage Company in Gangsta Granny, Grand Opera House, York, February 3 to 5, 2.30pm and 7pm; February 6, 11am and 3pm

IN David Walliams’s tale, Friday night means only one thing for 11-year-old Ben: staying with Granny, where he must put up with cabbage soup, cabbage pie and cabbage cake.

Ben knows one thing for sure – it will be so, so boring – but what Ben doesn’t know is that Granny has a secret. Soon Friday nights will be more exciting than he could ever imagine, as he embarks on the adventure of a lifetime with his very own Gangsta Granny, in Neal Foster’s touring production, back in York next week for the first time since 2016. Suitable for age five upwards. Box office: 0844 871 7615 or at atgtickets.com/York.

Two out of Seven: Shed Seven’s Rick Witter and Paul Banks to perform as a duo in Scarborough

Compact Sheds: Rick Witter and Paul Banks, Scarborough Spa Theatre, April 17, 7.30pm

SHED Seven shed three when frontman Rick Witter and lead guitarist Paul Banks “go where no Shed has gone before” to play Scarborough over the Easter weekend.

Mr H Presents promoter Tim Hornsby says: “Expect a special night of classic Shed Seven material and a few surprises”.

“You already know this whites-of-their-eyes show is going to sell out, so don’t get bothered with the regular unholy last-minute scramble for tickets and purchase early for a holler-along to some of the best anthems ever,” he advises. Box office: scarboroughspa.co.uk.

James Swanton as Lucifer with cast members of The Last Judgement when plays from the 2018 York Mystery Plays were staged in the Shambles Market. Picture: Lewis Outing

Looking ahead to the summer: 2022 York Mystery Plays, York city centre, June 19 and 26

HERE come the wagons, rolling through York streets on two June weekends, as the Guilds of York maintain their four-yearly cycle of York Mystery Plays set in motion in 1998.

As in 2018, Tom Straszewski is the artistic director for a community production involving nearly 600 people creating hours of drama, performed for free, on eight wagons at four locations, including St Sampson’s Square, St Helen’s Square and King’s Manor.

“The plays will cover the creation of the world, floods, last meals together and resurrections,” says Strasz. “We’re still seeking directors, performance groups and actors, who should email director@yorkmysteryplays.co.uk to apply.”

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REVIEW: Martin Dreyer’s verdict on Opera North’s Rigoletto, Leeds Grand Theatre

Sir Willard White as Monterone in Rigoletto, his first Opera North role since 1984. Picture: Clive Barda

EXPECTATION ran high in advance of this new Rigoletto from theatre director Femi Elufowoju Jr, not least because it marked his first venture into the world of opera.

Opera North’s last skirmish with Giuseppe Verdi’s piece was a grubby gangland affair in 2007 that eliminated aristocratic titles along with Giovanna. This time, according to an interview in the programme, the setting was present-day ‘Mantua, UK’, adding racism to the work’s already heavy load of problems in society.

There was absolutely nothing wrong in choosing black singers for all the “outsider” roles, headed by Rigoletto, Gilda and Count Monterone, and including Countess Ceprano and Marullo, but it became a dodgy move.

During the prelude, we saw Rigoletto being primped in a dressing-room, for what seemed like a play within a play; there was a purfling of lighting round the proscenium. Attendees at the Duke’s orgy were a scruffy lot, mainly in everyday clothes, with men in paint-splattered overalls as if they had accidentally strayed in from backstage workshops. So far, so egalitarian.

Rigoletto’s moanings about his deformity (supposedly a hunchback) fell on deaf ears: here was the tallest man in the cast, a striking figure, standing tall, albeit occasionally writhing and twitching as if having an epileptic fit.

Sharp-eyed programme-readers might have gleaned that his was mental disfigurement caused by Monterone’s curse – hard to believe. To everyone else, it looked dangerously as if skin colour was the cause of the scorn he endured, quite the opposite of the intended effect. In any case, directors should not rely on programme notes to explain what they put on stage.

Jasmine Habersham as Gilda and Eric Greene as Rigoletto. Picture: Clive Barda

There were further difficulties. The whole kidnapping episode had an aura of farce. The (mainly white) thugs were far from menacing in their vermillion onesies, brandishing electric torches in synchronisation like Keystone Cops.

Retreating, they reappeared in Coco the Clown masks. It was hard to tell whether they were intended to be figures of fun or if this was simply a directorial misjudgement. Either way, it had little to do with Verdi, still less his librettist Piave.

Gilda had to be clumsily kidnapped from astride the life-size zebra in her bedroom (her menagerie also included a toucan). Like the duke’s palace, it was gaudily decorated in red and gold designs by Rae Smith more redolent of Bollywood than Brentwood.

Rigoletto’s arrest by two heavily-armed British constables was doubtless intended to evoke the law’s use of excessive force based on colour. Uncomfortable, of course – but also irrelevant here. Indeed, so many superimposed details seemed to cloud the director’s intentions.

Eric Greene carried the title role with surprising grace, given the wide spectrum of attitudes he was supposed to strike. In mid-range, his baritone was flexible and clean, less so higher up where his focus was more diffuse.

His duet with Gilda was touching. She was Jasmine Habersham, who made a virtue of her light soprano in a poignant, delicately ornamented ‘Caro nome’. She also looked every bit the ingénue, kept apart and therefore out of her depth, even if she needed to soar more in ensemble.

Alyona Abramova as Maddalena in Opera North’s Rigoletto. Picture: Clive Barda

Roman Arndt’s self-regarding Duke seemed bent on Italianate tone at all costs, attractive enough but also mannered. Sir Willard White, returning to Leeds for the first time since 1984, injected authority as a stentorian Monterone. Callum Thorpe’s tattooed Sparafucile looked and sounded ruthless, pleasingly complemented by Alyona Abramova’s statuesque Maddalena.

They were certainly masters of the squalid landscape of Act III, with its corpse of a car, assorted detritus and shadowy lighting (Howard Hudson), a stylistic improvement on the tasteless décor earlier.

Despite the upheavals on stage, Garry Walker maintained a cool head and a decisive beat in the pit, and his orchestra reacted with discipline and confidence; the chorus was typically ebullient, if not quite as taut an ensemble as the orchestra.

But sight and sound were rarely synchronised: the director might have paid more attention to what is actually in the score. Opera audiences enjoy and understand history, even – given the chance – that of 16th century Mantua. They do not react well to having modern precepts constantly forced down their throats, especially when these have little or nothing to do with the original opera.

We still await the arrival of a director with the courage to be traditional in this work.

Martin Dreyer

Further performances: January 29, February 4, 11 and 19, then on tour until April 1. Box office: operanorth.co.uk

Zebra crossing stage: part of a Rae Smith design landscape “more redolent of Bollywood than Brentwood”. Picture: Clive Barda
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What’s up for debate by Two Big Egos In A Small Car podcasters Chalmers & Hutch?

Who’s listening? Hutch cocks an ear beside Maggi Hambling’s seaside sculpture, The Scallop, on the beach at Aldeburgh, Suffolk

DOES Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza top Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood?

Arts podcasters Graham Chalmers and Charles Hutchinson mull over two Tinsel Town fables.

Plus re-discovering Bruce Springsteen on scorching form at No Nukes in 1979, on its belated CD and DVD release, and welcoming news of new music venues for York and Edinburgh.

To listen, head to: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1187561/9927881

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Sunday Lunch video star and Posh Pop queen Toyah to play Pocklington in March

Toyah in Posh Pop mode

EIGHTIES’ pop star Toyah will play Pocklington Arts Centre on March 3 on her up-close-and-personal Posh Pop Tour.

Her “lively cinematic sound” will combine Toyah’s vocals with keyboards and stand-up bass in her arrangements of such hits as It’s A Mystery, Thunder In The Mountains and I Want To Be Free, modern-day works Sensational and Dance In The Hurricane and selections from last autumn’s Posh Pop album.

These will be complemented by stories from her colourful 40-year career that has gained YouTube momentum latterly with Toyah’s Sunday Lunch videos with husband Robert Fripp, drawing ten million views since being started in lockdown. A new season was launched last weekend with their quickfire take on The Undertones’ Teenage Kicks.

Toyah: Posh Pop Tour, Pocklington Arts Centre, Thursday, March 3, 8pm. Box office: 01759 301547 or at pocklkingtonartscentre.co.uk.

Toyah Willcox: Journey from punk princess to Posh Pop queen

AHEAD of her Pocklington show, Martin Hutchinson profiles Birmingham-born singer, actor, television presenter and writer Toyah Willcox.

ONCE known as the “Punk Princess”, Toyah has proved that she is no one-trick-pony. She is an actor of note, featuring in films such as Jubilee, Quadrophenia and Ghosts Of Borley Rectory and the TV shows Shoestring, Minder, Kavanagh QC and Maigret.

She supplied her voice to the animated Mr Bean series and Teletubbies and has ‘done’ Shakespeare, playing Miranda in Derek Jarman’s 1979 film version of The Tempest.

To most of us, however, Toyah is a singer, who took the charts by storm when she first erupted on the scene in 1980. After five releases that failed to interest the mainstream Top 40, despite going top ten in the independent charts, Toyah broke through with the Four From Toyah EP, featuring the fantastic It’s A Mystery that propelled it to number four.

It was to be the first of four consecutive Toyah number ones in the UK independent charts. I Want To Be Free and Thunder In The Mountainswere top ten mainstream hits too and another EP, Four More From Toyah, came next.

The artwork for Toyah’s 2021 album, Posh Pop

Toyah has notched up ten chart albums, including Anthem, which peaked at number two in 1981. The Court Of The Crimson Queen – a reference to her husband Robert Fripp, whose band King Crimson’s breakthrough album was 1969’s In The Court Of The Crimson King – returned her to the album charts after a 33-year gap in 2008.

Last August, she released Posh Pop, an album recorded during lockdown, whose ten tracks each have an accompanying video, filmed mainly in Toyah’s Worcestershire home as well as Pershore Abbey.

Posh Pop went to the very top of the independent charts and reached number 22 in the mainstream charts, making it her highest-charting album since 1982.

All the songs were written by Toyah and her long-standing collaborator Simon Darlow and Bobby Willcox contributed guitar. Who’s he? He just happens to be husband Fripp under a pseudonym.

The album’s lyrics deal with such subjects as letting go of the past (Levitate), teleconferencing (Zoom Zoom) and the need for leadership (Monkeys).

Posh Pop has given Toyah her highest album chart placing since 1982

Levitate, Zoom Zoom and the anti-war protest song Summer Of Love have been released as singles, while Take Me Home is a sequel to Danced from Toyah’s 1979 album, Sheep Farming In Barnet

Writer Darlow’s childhood dream of being an astronaut was the ignition for Space Dance and The Bride Will Return was inspired by Israa al Seblani, a bride whose wedding was disrupted by the 2020 Beirut explosion that killed more than 200 people. She was having her wedding portraits taken at the time.

“[The] song is very much to celebrate the beauty of the brides around the world, who’ve not been able to have their weddings during lockdown,” says Toyah, who married Fripp in 1986.

Now, Toyah is heading around the country in February and March with her Posh Pop band, presenting intimate versions of her classic singles, interspersed with tracks from her new album, and audiences could be in for a few eye-openers as some songs will be performed acoustically.

Already, several songs on Posh Pop have become fan favourites, sitting comfortably alongside her greatest hits.

Now 63 but looking decades younger, Toyah Willcox is still a pocket powerhouse and never fails to put on a magnificent show. Posh Pop in Pock is not to be missed.

Toyah in concert, where she will combine songs and stories on her 2022 tour
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Rick Witter and Paul Banks to play Easter weekend gigs in Barnsley and Scarborough. Expect Shed Seven faves and surprises

RICK Witter and Paul Banks are “going where no Shed has gone before” to play Easter weekend gigs in Barnsley and Scarborough.

Mr H Presents promoter Tim Hornsby has booked the Shed Seven singer and lead guitarist for Birdwell Venue, Barnsley, on April 16 at 7pm and Scarborough Spa Theatre for April 17 at 7.30pm. “Special nights of classic Shed Seven material and a few surprises” are promised.

“Fresh from yet another Shedcember of sold-out shows, and long after the NME darlings have faded away, the mighty Shed Seven are still packing huge venues, and why ever not,” says Mr H. “Since when did b****y great big tunes, consummate musicianship and fabulous shows ever go out of fashion?

“And so we welcome the thinnest man in pop with the biggest voice and the warmest personality, Mr Rick Witter; the witty and urbane frontman of a band that, lest we forget, once rivalled Oasis for Top 20 hits.

“Joined here for the first time in Barnsley and Scarborough by partner-in-crime, the brilliant guitarist and eloquent songwriter Paul Banks, an electrifying showman in his own right and a player with an instantly recognisable style and sound.”

Pre-sales open on Wednesday at https://bit.ly/3GVsTGWand https://bit.ly/RickWitterPaulBanksAcoustic; general tickets go on sale on Friday. “You already know these whites-of-their-eyes shows are going to sell out, so don’t get bothered with the regular unholy last-minute scramble for tickets and purchase early for a holler-along to some of the best anthems ever,” advises Mr H.

Barnsley box office: ents24.com/barnsley-events/birdwell-venue/rick-witter/6412282; Scarborough: ents24.com/scarborough-events/scarborough-spa/rick-witter-paul-banks-shed-seven/6399236.

The poster for Rick Witter and Paul Banks’s duo gigs in Barnsley and Scarborough

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Uriah Heep head ‘from lockdown to rockdown’ for York Barbican autumn gig

Uriah Heep: 50th anniversary tour gig at York Barbican

PUT your hands together for Uriah Heep, belatedly celebrating their 50th anniversary with a British tour that has newly added an October 9 gig York Barbican.

Formed in London in 1969 from the ashes of guitarist Mick Box’s Brentwood band Hogwash, they have released 25 studio and 21 official live albums, selling more than 45 million albums worldwide and playing 4,000 shows in 60 countries.

Their pathway through prog-flavoured heavy rock has taken them from 1970 debut Very ’Eavy… Very ’Umble to 2018’s Living The Dream.

“Who would have imagined back in 1970 that Uriah Heep would still be here celebrating their 50th anniversary?” says Box, who is joined in the 2022 line-up by keyboardist Phil Lanzon, lead vocalist Bernie Shaw, drummer Russell Gilbrook and bassist Dave Rimmer.

“It’s an amazing feat, especially as the band are still a vibrant force in the live arena and still producing albums like Living The Dream.

“It’s with great pride that we enter this 50th anniversary with the same passion, desire and love of what we do, and long may it last. There are still horizons to conquer and new songs to write and perform, and it feels like the adventure has just begun.”

As Uriah Heep switch “from lockdown to rockdown”, Box offers a big thank-you to the fans that have “kept with us every inch of the way”. “They just keep growing in numbers by the day,” he says. “Feeling good? You bet I am! ’Appy days!”

Tickets are on sale at yorkbarbican.co.uk.

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More Things To Do in York and beyond when moments of laughter, sadness and reflection make List No. 66, from The Press

Beth Hutchinson in her monologue in Rowntree Players’ premiere of The Missing Peace. Picture: Duncan Lomax

FROM The Missing Peace to Shed Seven at the races, Charles Hutchinson finds the missing pieces to fill your diary

Premiere of the week: Rowntree Players in The Missing Peace, Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, January 27 to 29, 7.30pm and 2.30pm Saturday matinee

ROWNTREE Players director Gemma McDonald has adapted York author, singer, motivational conference speaker and charity champion Big Ian Donaghy’s book The Missing Peace, now billed as “One play…15 endings”.

On stage, Donaghy’s exploration of life after death takes the form of 15 Talking Heads-style monologues, many drawn from interviews he conducted in York. “It’s not a play about death, it’s a play about life,” he says. “There will be moments of laughter, sadness and reflection throughout.”

Look out for Mark Addy, who has recorded the narrator’s role as the Station Announcer. Box office: 01904 501935 or at josephrowntreetheatre.co.uk.

Ben Earle and Crissie Rhodes of The Shires: Acoustic show in their regular haunt of Pocklington

Country gig of the week: The Shires – Acoustic, Pocklington Arts Centre, January 26, 8pm

THE Shires, Britain’s best-selling country music act, bring their 2022 intimate acoustic tour to Pocklington on the back of working on their upcoming fifth album.

Award-winning duo Ben Earle and Crissie Rhodes have made a habit of playing Pocklington since their Studio debut in 2014, appearing regularly at PAC and playing the Platform Festival at The Old Station in 2016 and 2019. To check ticket availability, go to pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk or call 01759 301547. 

Ross Noble: What is a Humournoid? Find out, or maybe not, in his new tour show

Comedy gig of the week: Ross Noble: Humournoid, Grand Opera House, York, January 29, 8pm

WHAT happens when a creature is created and bred to do stand up, asks Geordie comic Ross Noble in his Covid-delayed but finally here new tour show, Humournoid?

“Nobody knows because that isn’t a thing,” says his tour blurb. “What is a thing is Ross Noble doing a show. You can come and see it. This is it.”

As ever with this improviser supreme, it turns out Humournoid has no theme, says Noble, who promises a typically freewheeling performance on his return to one of his five favourite venues in the world. Box office: atgtickets.com/York.

Porridge Radio: Brighton band making waves at The Crescent in York. Picture: El Hardwick

If you discover one band this month, make it: Porridge Radio, The Crescent, York, January 31, 7.30pm

EVERY Bad, their 2020 album released by the super-cool Secretly Canadian label, has propelled Porridge Radio from a word-of-mouth gem of Brighton’s DIY scene to one of the country’s most exciting upcoming bands.

“Last here opening for BC Camplight, we’re very pleased to see them return,” say promoters Please Please You and Brudenell Presents. Pet Shimmers, a new supercharged seven-piece from Bristol, support. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.

Malaika Kegode: Guest poet at Say Owt Slam’s return to The Crescent

Word wars: Say Owt Slam with guest poet Malaika Kegode, The Crescent, York, February 5, 7.30pm

BRISTOL writer, performer and producer Malaika Kegode will be the special guest at York spoken-word hub Say Owt’s first Slam night for more than two years.

Kegode has appeared at WOMAD and Edinburgh Book Festival, published two poetry collections with Burning Eye Books and created Outlier, an autobiographical gig-theatre with prog-rock band Jakabol. Passionate about cinema, culture and race, her lyrical work journeys through lives and loves, exploring genre, form and the power of the written word made visual.

In the raucous poetry Slam, performers will have three minutes each to wow the audience. Box office: thecrescentyork.com.

Contrarian comedian Alfie Brown: Emotional moments in his Sensitive Man show

Moral dilemmas: Alfie Brown: Sensitive Man, Theatre@41, Monkgate, York, February 10, 8pm

DOES emotion help us make moral judgments? In his new show, contrarian comedian Alfie Moore will address this question, using jokes.

These jokes will weave together to create something greater than the sum of their parts, answering a question about emotion and its complicated relationship with morality.

“I refute that I am saying things to plainly and wilfully disrupt social progress,” he says. “I am not. I might seem smug, I know, apologies, and I am often misunderstood. So, at this particular point in the unfolding history of meaning, intention, signs and signifiers, I am sometimes going to tell you what I mean.” Box office: tickets.41monkgate.co.uk.

Florence Odumosu as Nina Simone in Black Is The Color Of My Voice at the SJT, Scarborough

Nina’s blues: Black Is The Color Of My Voice, Stephen Joseph Theatre, Scarborough, March 12, 7.30pm

FLORENCE Odumosu plays Nina Simone in Apphia Campbell’s story of the North Carolina-born jazz and blues singer and activist seeking redemption after the untimely death of her father. 

Simone reflects on the journey that took her from a young piano prodigy, destined for a life in the service of the church, to a renowned vocalist and pianist at the forefront of the civil rights movement. Box office: 01723 370541 or at sjt.uk.com.

Chasing winners: Shed Seven to play after the May 14 race card at Doncaster Racecourse

Racing certainty…hopefully: Shed Seven, Live After Racing @Doncaster Racecourse, May 14, from 11.15am

YORK band Shed Seven’s day at the races should have taken place on May 15 2021, but Covid made it a non-runner. Now they are under starter’s orders at Doncaster Racecourse for a hit-laden live set after the May 15 race card this spring.

Among the Sheds’ runners and riders will be Going For Gold, Chasing Rainbows, She Left Me On Friday, Disco Down, Dolphin, Where Have You Been Tonight? and fan favourites from 2017’s comeback album Instant Pleasures, Room In My House and Better Days. For tickets for the race-day and concert package, go to: doncaster-racecourse.co.uk/whats-on.

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There is nothing like…two dames

Berwick Kaler: Had to miss the last week of Dick Turpin Rides Again at the Grand Opera House, York, after positive Covid test. Picture: David Harrison

HOW did a York theatre cope with Covid crocking its legendary dame? Find out in Episode 73 of Graham Chalmers and Charles Hutchinson‘s Two Big Egos In A Small Car podcast. Under discussion too are Peter Jackson’s fab, formidable Beatles documentary Get Back; Mike Leigh’s Naked foreseeing Britpop and The Tourist going down better than Novax in Australia.

To listen, head to: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1187561/9886020

Alan McHugh: Aberdeen’s dame answered the call when Covid struck Berwick Kaler
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Odin Dragonfly go down to the sea to launch the alluring call of their Sirens album

Sirens by the sea: Odin Dragonfly’s Heather Findlay and Angela Gordon. Picture: Howard Rankin

YORK duo Odin Dragonfly release second album Sirens tomorrow, fully 15 years since their debut, Offerings.

Heather Findlay and Angela Gordon met in their late teens, first writing, playing and singing together when on the road with York prog-rock band Mostly Autumn.

“Lovingly crafting away behind dressing room doors, in hotel rooms, on the tour bus and in airport lounges while we whiled away the spare hours touring life brought, in 2007 we decided we had collected enough songs together to make a record, and so our debut album was born,” they say on their website.

They duly offered up Offerings, released under the name of Odin Dragonfly, an anagram of their surnames Findlay and Gordon.

They have gone on to play together across Britain, Europe and the United States, while Heather has built up her solo career post-Mostly Autumn and Angela has performed with Leather’O, a gypsy, Celtic and folk band, and Stout Boots, who specialise in “Celtic pub songs played hard”.

Odin Dragonfly in their Offerings days

Sirens has emerged under contrasting circumstances to Offerings, under the shadow of the pandemic. Last May, Heather posted: “Myself and Angela are tracking our instruments for the new Odin Dragonfly album in our home studio spaces and we are planning to get together to record our vocals in the very near future! 

“This album has a very mystical, evocative and oceanic vibe to it and the artwork is being created by our wonderful and very talented friend Howard Rankin, whose work we absolutely love!

“We’ve been brainstorming with him online and the three of us will be heading to a blustery Yorkshire beach next month [June 2021] to capture some vibey, windswept shots!”

At the time, Heather was hopeful Sirens would come a’calling towards autumn, and yes, she and Angela did meet up to record their vocals and did make it to the beach for photographing Rankin’s beautiful album artwork. However, the album launch was moved to today, preceded by the January 7 single, Driving, and pre-orders for the limited-edition “1st 500” bundles of Sirens.

Now the day has arrived, Angela says: “It feels like the most personal piece of work I’ve been involved in. It has my heart and soul in it. I think people will hear that. It’s been kind of strange, listening back, how current some of the themes sound, given that some of these songs are 15, 20 years old.”

Howard Rankin’s album cover artwork for Odin Dragonfly’s Sirens

Heather reflects: “In creative terms, I feel Sirens features some of our most accomplished song-writing. As Angela says, it’s been quite magical to see how these songs have woven themselves together into this one body of work, which has ended up feeling so cohesive.

“It’s almost as if Sirens was written completely as a concept album, made to reflect the current times we are sharing on this planet.

“It kind of confirms to me the sense that songs really do come from somewhere else. I imagine it almost as though they were like a message in a bottle that was always meant to be washed ashore right now.”

Heather found the album’s journey to the finishing line becoming increasingly cathartic and therapeutic against the backdrop of Covid’s stultifying grip. ” It was magnifying glass to a lot of what was going on: the enforced separation that led us to look within. The recording process we had to do brought out what was already in the songs,” she says.

“This album has a very mystical, evocative and oceanic vibe to it,” say Odin Dragonfly

Angela, pianist, flautist and singer, explains the lengthy hiatus between albums: “Sirens has been a long time in the making because it was a backburner project for us as we’re both busy with lots of other projects, but then we found time to record the piano and guitar parts separately, and after the first lockdown we were able to get together for Heather to record my vocals and flute,” she says.

“The songs were devised before Covid struck and some of them we’d been playing live for a couple of years, so a lot of the collaborative work had been done.”

One progression for Angela has been in her confidence in singing. “Heather has coached me through my vocals, where I can be front and centre in my own songs for Odin Dragonfly, to the point where I can sing some lead vocals for Leather’O and Stout Boots. Heather has fed my confidence for those other projects.”

Heather, vocalist, guitarist, low whistle player and percussionist, says: “It’s difficult to express it in words, but I know what shape the voice needs, or what way the face should be pulled, for singing. It’s a very unschooled way of ‘feeling’ the other person’s feelings, but I would say Angela needs a lot less coaching than she thinks!”

Angela rejoins: “Part of having confidence is being able to get up and perform in front of people, but it was more personal than that for me. It was about mine and Heather’s relationship with the songs, and this album came from deeply expressed emotions that are really difficult to sing.

“It’s almost as if Sirens was written completely as a concept album, made to reflect the current times we are sharing on this planet,” says Heather Findlay

“So, there are things on the recordings that I wouldn’t have kept, but Heather’s super-skill is her ability to draw out both the emotion and the technical craft. I wouldn’t have kept as much of the emotional side if I’d been working with someone else but that would have been detrimental to the album. It became like a therapy session as much as a recording session, expressing those deep, deep feelings.”

Heather concurs: “The more singing you do, the more it opens your heart to show your vulnerabilities. If something is tugging at the heartstrings so much that you need to sing about, it becomes cathartic.

“You have to sing from your heart; otherwise you will not connect with the song; it has to have that authenticity,” she says. “But I’ve had awful experiences with a lack of confidence, where I’ve had to have a word with myself about ‘self-sabotage’ when singing.”

Performing a song requires you to “connect to the moment”, suggests Heather. “When you are singing or using the instrument that you’ve grafted over till it becomes part of you, that’s when you should be in ‘the moment,” she says.

Angela notes: “If you’re performing your own songs, it’s different to performing music written by someone else or your ensemble or a cover version. The feeling of vulnerability comes when you’re singing your own song.”

They must go down to the sea again: Odin Dragonfly’s siren call. Picture: Howard Rankin

“But at other times, it can come from a fear of being judged when there’s already a precedent there for singing that song,” says Heather.

Describing herself as “an instrumentalist before a vocalist,” Angela says: “You can express yourself through that instrument, and I believe the ultimate musical experience is not singing your own songs but performing with others.”

Prompted by enjoying the moment when Kate Bush sat alone playing the piano at the end of her concerts in her 2014 residency at London’s Eventim Apollo Hammersmith iand Tori Amos’s solo performances too, Angela played some solo piano concerts but…

…”It turns out there’s very little joy in performing alone, where you learn that’s not what music is for,” she says. “I now have no desire to perform on my own: as a vocalist I love creating harmonies and as a musician I love being part of the overall sound.”

The Sirens motif for the album emerged in part from a song that does not appear on the recording: Sirens Of The Sea. “It’s a classic pop song, an Ibiza trance kind of tune by OceanLab that we kept thinking would be a lovely song for Odin Dragonfly to cover, with a deep, emotional feel to it,” says Heather. “So that became like the intro track to what Sirens would become.”

“It feels like the most personal piece of work I’ve been involved in,” says Angela Gordon

Sirens Of The Sea sparked the nautical theme. “It lent itself to water sound effects at the start of the record and to the songs that we’d already collected like Across The Sea and Gulls,” says Angela. “It wasn’t a case of reverse engineering. It just felt right to call it Sirens.”

The vinyl edition, scheduled for springtime, will continue the theme with its transparent design with splashes of blue, and it has had an impact on the track order of CD, download and LP alike.. “The first side has the darker songs; Side B has the songs where it feels comforting and that it’s all going to be all right,” says Angela.

Track seven, Four And Twenty Moons, marks the change, taking on greater resonance in Covid times. “You think about the two years we’ve been through, with all that tumult, and there’s that feeling of ‘Enough. Blow the candles out’,” says Heather.

And what should we make of the choice of album title? Sirens may carry a Greek mythical status as dangerous temptresses whose singing drew sailors towards the rocks, but Angela counters: “We like to think of them luring you to their songs with their singing.” Odin Dragonfly certainly do that.

Odin Dragonfly release Sirens on Black Sand Records tomorrow on CD and download; the vinyl edition will follow in March or April. They will NOT be supporting One Iota at the Joseph Rowntree Theatre, York, tomorrow as first planned.