The Unitarian Church is a beautiful space, built in the 1820’s in the Greek revival style, but I’ve often found it disappointing as a music venue. It has an insanely high ceiling, which, with the wrong kind of band, can create a cacophony of unwanted reverberations and, despite being very central, doesn’t really hit people’s radars as a place they can attend. Its imposing Doric columns front, more often than not, a closed door.

 

Tonight, however, it proved to be an ideal setting for the stripped-back sets the Electric Soft Parade had planned. I made my way to the venue, nice and early, as I’d heard the show was meant to finish at 10pm and I’m glad I did as I managed to see an enchanting set from Leeds based band Dancing Years in its entirety. If this was a stripped back version of what they normally do they should consider making it their usual approach, the songs were haunting and beautifully delivered, making great use of the acoustics and the room and the venues own grand piano. Earnest, melodic, spacious and beautiful this was a great introduction to a band I’ll be looking out for in future. It’s a shame more people didn’t heed the early call to catch their set as the venue didn’t really begin to fill up until after they had finished.

 

Electric Soft Parade followed with two acoustic sets, with familiar songs stripped down to vocals, acoustic guitars, sparse percussion and that lovely sounding piano again. For the first set they played strong offerings from their latest studio album, ‘IDIOTS’, alongside memorable songs from throughout their career, including early hit Silent To The Dark. The performance was buoyed up by high spirits and a healthy dose of Christmas cheer. Alex and Tom were on top form displaying a great deal of self-deprecating humour which peaked for me in their rendition of ‘Mr Mitchell’ from the new album, a sunny ELO referencing tune that sees the brothers swapping verses and, eventually struggling with the number of key changes they had thrown into the arrangement – ‘too many chords’ they cried, by way of apology and the room erupted in laughter.

 

They rounded the night off with a guest-star speckled set of covers and classic Christmas songs, after pausing to buy more wine for mulling in the interval. We were treated to an excellent rendition of the Fairytale of New York (the best Christmas song!) with Mark Chadwick from The Levellers taking on Shane MacGowan’s parts and New York Dolly Heather Urquhart taking on Kirsty MacColl’s. This was followed by an impressive rendition of Wizard’s I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday, sung by cheeky trombonist Gram Canyon, who plays in Alex White’s side project Interlocutor. By now the laughter was coming fast and thick from the packed church and the night ended appropriately with a sing-along to White Christmas. All my usual bah-humbugs were banished and I was ready, finally, for the festive season to begin!
Adam Kidd