Arriving back in Brighton during a torrential downpour that seemed to last for days, Glasgow’s C Duncan must have felt at home in more ways than one. Brighton is the home of his record label, Fat Cat Records, so there is an obvious connection and affinity between him and the city. He brought his blissful and chilled out sounds to Komedia as part of his latest UK-wide tour in support of The Midnight Sun, the follow up to his Mercury-prize nominated debut Architect.

First though on a night of diverse music, Brighton resident Ruby Taylor took to the stage under her Yumi And The Weather guise. Playing keyboards and guitar (sometimes at the same time), her electropop went down well with the crowd as her likeable personality outweighed obvious nerves on the night. It would be really interesting to see her perform with a live band, as her singing to a backing track slightly diminished the effect especially on the great closing track ‘Must I Wait’. Following her onto the stage, Stevie Parker delivered an exceptionally tight set including an acoustic cover of Joe Jackson’s ‘It’s Different For Girls’. Their confidence seems to have grown each time they return to Brighton, and it was great to see them becoming more animated towards the end of their set.

C (short for Christopher) Duncan and his band came to the stage just before ten, launching into ‘Like You Do’ from last year’s album The Midnight Sun. That album was a departure into more experimental and electronic sounds, however live he noticeably sounds more classically folk throughout. The all-male backing group's harmonies on the opening few songs generated a real Fleet Foxes feeling, particularly during ‘Say’ where Duncan ditched the keyboard in favour of an acoustic guitar. He showed a soulful voice on tracks such as ‘Do I Hear?’, and it was clear that the expanded live band is adding new elements and flavours to his usual sound.

Duncan’s songs in the first half of the set drift by in a pleasant manner, and this air of unfailing politeness and pleasantries eventually present a problem. It reminded me of the kind of background music that you would listen to while staring at beautiful landscapes on a long train journey. Every track was perfectly nice and lovely in its own way, but never quite doing anything unusual or startling enough to jog you out of that dreamy mood. The exception to this however was the set highlight of ‘Castle Walls’, which was simply breathtaking and spellbinding in it’s simplicity and beauty. Singing to absolute silence from the crowd, Duncan and his group delivered a real moment with this song relying just on the natural harmony of their voices. Following that with rowdy new song ‘Sibling’ had the desired effect of shaking the crowd out of their polite swaying. One more change of pace came with ‘For’ with it’s upbeat whistling, however afterwards Duncan returned to the mellow style once more for the remainder of the set.

After a fairly short main set, Duncan paused briefly before returning for a one song encore with ‘Garden’ from his first album Architect. On this final track, he finally cut loose fully and delivered a spiky and bouncy version complete with added handclaps between band and audience in the same sort of style that you would see at a Bear’s Den show. Personally, I would love to have seen a few more unrestrained moments and changes of gear like this with the shackles off as at times it was all just a bit too “nice”. Having said that, with everything going on in the world at the moment, perhaps we could all do with a bit more “nice” in our lives. He seems to have already moved on in his sound since the album’s release last year, so we will wait to see where he goes next with interest.
Jamie MacMillan