NORTHUMBRIAN MUSIC
NIGHTS
What we said about
Prelude
Prelude kick off North Pennines Festival
Call it sophisticated country blues, and you'd not be far wrong. But facile labelling of Prelude's music, as heard last Friday at Allendale's King's Head, would be to miss the point of the sparkling solo songs from Irene Hume, and the superb harmonies from Brian Hume and Jim Hornsby. This is a band that knows how to make music. It was a scintillating start for the North Pennines Festival.
'Loving You' set the tone for the night, with Irene's achingly beautiful voice lifting us off this mortal plane, and planting us in another dimension, where harmonies conspire to enchant. 'Be kind to me' and 'Red Dress' evoked the pain of relationships that we lovingly associate with country music, while 'The Land of Broken Dreams' let loose Jim's slide steel guitar harmonies. What a lovely sound from the six-piece band, including Tony Davis on keyboards, Chris Ringer on bass, and young Simon Ferry debuting on drums.
'Let it go' was another driving, bitter-sweet anthem, and incidentally the title track on Prelude's new CD, while Brian riposted with one of his own solos on 'Nobody knows but me'. These voices were made to sing, alone or together, beautifully.
After the break, 'Dance with me' and 'This crazy love of mine' combined with 'One more chance' to break our hearts again and again. 'The tears that I cry every time you say good-bye' were an intriguing counter-point to the still evocative a capella 'After the Goldrush', with its dreamy feeling of otherness. But Prelude brought us back with a jolt to the extra-reality of country sensibility with the seamy story of 'Platinum Blonde'.
They left us, finally, with encores of 'Independence Day' and 'Crying on the shoulder of the road', but it had been a delightful sojourn into country anguish, heartbreak and pain, which only Prelude's music could assuage.
