TONIGHT will be the last time The Howl And The Hum frontman and songwriter Sam Griffiths plays The Crescent in York before packing his bags on Thursday to start a new life in London.
Latterly living in Leeds, but with his band rooted in the York scene since 2017, Sam is to take up a post teaching guitar at a primary school and will live in Walthamstow.
He hinted at the move south during The Howl & The Hum’s set at their traditional Christmas gig at The Crescent last night, a tease greeted with jovial Yorkshire jeers, and then confirmed his exit in conversation with CharlesHutchPress post-show, still dressed as a King from the band’s Nativity play attire for their 17-song set.
Sam will play an intimate, seated solo set under The Howl & The Hum moniker tonight when Diehard Christmas, one of several winter songs he has composed, will definitely feature.
CharlesHutchPress, reviewing elsewhere earlier in the evening, caught the second half of last night’s set, after support spots by Seafarers’ Scottish songwriter and saxophonist Matthew Herd and Leeds musician Marnie Glum.
Herd has become integral to Griffiths’ new line-up of The Howl And The Hum, also featuring Sam’s Leeds flatmate Naomi McLeod on bass, Dave Hamblett on drums and Arun Thavasothy on guitar.
His King’s crown removed after Echo, Griffiths went into solo mode on guitar for No Calories In Cocaine, Sunny Christmas – written on a cocktail of spite and drink, he said – and Hostages, a trilogy of blissed release from pain marked by a stillness and grace in performance that has come to mark his magnetic stage craft, laced with disarming wit and charm between songs.
Griffiths’s fellow kings and the Virgin Mary (or maybe Naomi was an angel?) returned for a glorious home run of Sweet Fading Silver, Hall Of Fame, second album title track Same Mistake Twice and debut single Godmanchester Chinese Bridge, still arguably the most beautiful song ever written in York. Herd’s saxophone grows on you, the more it caresses each Griffiths search for beauty in nature amid nocturnal vulnerabilities.
But that’s the thing with Sam Griffiths: he keeps surpassing that early peak, whether Dirt or first encore The Only Boy Racer Left On The Island, He has even found the perfect finale in the “Everything will be alright’ closing refrain to Everything Is Not On Fire.
After more than 12 years, this eloquent, exquisitely poetic University of York alumnus is returning south, but with the promise of Christmas reunions at The Crescent for years to come. In the meantime, thank you, Sam, for so many Miserable Disco nights. May The Howl & The Hum prosper, wherever the path leads now.