Liam Frost / Kathryn Edwards

London Spitz is a cracking little venue with a capacity near to 300 people. Situated just off the back of the newly renovated Spitafields Market you enter into a charming looking bistro/art gallery. The actual music venue is up a few flights of stairs in what seems like the attic. A few words of warning: There is no cloakroom and the toilets are in the basement. I drank a few too many pints and the trek to the toilet turned out to be a good bit of exercise.

So, onto the music. The most notable of the three support acts on the night was a young lady called Kathryn Edwards. She was the only one of the support acts to gain the respect from a rather noisy and disrespectful audience. Edwards has a magnificent breathy voice which will surely have some mainstream appeal in the coming years. During a song about her 21st birthday party her lyrics “sway, sway, fall over” seemed a little too simple to take seriously but she managed to gain the attention of the audience and earned herself an excellent reception.

	"The lyrics on practically every song show a bleak optimism that can give an element of hopefulness to even the most desolate of his tracks."

For those of you who don't know of Liam Frost, he is a portly Mancunian in his early twenties with one full album (Show Me How the Spectres Dance) under his belt. This album happens to be one of the more critically acclaimed albums of last year and Guy Garvey has described Frost as “the UK’s answer to Bright Eyes”. However, Liam Frost has enough personality of his own to ensure that he needn’t be an answer to anybody.

He came to the stage with a couple of his band, The Slowdown Family, and a string quartet. This stripped down set-up seemed to be lacking early on as Frost seemed to strum his guitar a little harder to make up for the lack of drum kit. As good as ‘City at a Standstill’ was, I felt it came up a little short of the record.

The string quartet then left the stage leaving Liam alone to sing ‘Is this Love?’ (not to be confused with ‘This is Love’). For the first time in the evening the crowd were truly hushed and Liam’s passionate voice had a grasp on everybody. For me, this was the turning point of the set and I started to really believe every word that came from his mouth. Soon after, he played a b-side that was new to me. It turned out to be another unbelievably gorgeous tune and one of the many spine tingling moments from the set. The lyrics on practically every song show a bleak optimism that can give an element of hopefulness to even the most desolate of his tracks.

The intimate setting and acoustic set-up meant that crowd participation was minimal but that really suited the occasion. People seemed happy to listen and soak up each beautiful tune. The one time that Frost looked to the audience for help was during ‘She Painted Pictures’. During the chorus he looked for the audience to lend a hand – the only taker was a tall man to my left who had his own impromptu solo, singing “I draw the line, this then will define us” back at Frost. Liam Frost thanked him and continued with the song. An amusing moment.

Liam Frost was, however, in quite a chatty mood. Most of his banter was funny but some was quite weak. At least he realised when his banter was poor and apologised! He seemed to be very happy on, what he claimed was, his first sold out London show. Many of his songs have references to alcohol and tonight he didn’t disappoint as he came to the stage with a bottle of Jack Daniels. After offering the bottle to the crowd (there were no takers) he shrugged his shoulder and said “Ah, well – one for the doctor” and took a hefty swig for himself.

Finishing with “The Mourners of St Pauls” (quite possibly track of 2006?) and a full compliment of strings and band, Frost kept the best until last. It gave a full overview of the breadth of songs that he has written. ‘Mourners’ was probably the highlight of the night but it was such a well-built set that the entire gig flowed smoothly to the finish. I’m looking forward to seeing Mr Frost again and hopefully next time he’ll have his whole ‘Family’ with him.

FUTURE GIGS

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