Samantha Crain comes onstage to huge applause and announces she’s going to play her latest album You Had Me At Goodbye in full, which is met with another wave of approval from the crowd. The album has already received lots of praise from critics and fans alike and to watch it unfold live was something to savour. Considering she’s got three other albums behind her, this experience feels like a rare delight.

There’s no sense of forced progression, her songs flow as if like they came very naturally to her when writing. The strings and clarinet provide a seamless flow which give the set that authentic sheen and smoothness that are so present on her album. Her voice sounds brilliant: in no way overpowering, but soft with a perfect delivery.

Playing the album in full, she opens with the upbeat ‘Antiseptic Greeting’ which demonstrates this flow perfectly. Her backing band is small, just Samantha covering vocals and guitar, a keyboardist who interchanges with playing bass guitar, a strings player, a drummer and Brighton’s own Emma Gatrill on clarinet and backing vocals. All great musicians, they manage to give that great live polish you’d expect from the recording studio.

Things slow down a little at ‘Loneliest Handsome Man’, a more intimate song where she loses the poppy feel of the preceding numbers, showing a deeper side to her songwriting. She tells the crowd that it’s about her friend who’s a “Don Draper” type who has it all: the great job, good looks and still manages to be “…well a total asshole”. This wins its own applause from the Brighton crowd.

She moves on to ‘Red Sky, Blue Mountain’ which is sung in the Native American language of her ancestors. She tells the crowd that they may not understand it as only about 20,000 people speak it and “I doubt any of you are in this room”. It’s a really beautiful song, bare and delicate. She plays the song like a traditional folk song, with a winding guitar plucking the chords. The song is sung in a language that no one in the crowd will grasp yet you understand that she’s telling a story.

Tracks ‘Smile When’ and ‘Betty’s Eulogy’ don’t manage to capture the same magic as the rest of the set. This didn’t detract too much from the evening and when an artist plays an entire album live, there is always a risk that those more relaxed songs don’t have the same effect and excitement as the rest of the set, even though they work beautifully in the context of the album. However, this doesn’t detract massively from the rest of the set though and brings the show towards its conclusion as we’re leaning towards the final tracks of the album.

Final track ‘Wreck’ ends things nicely. A really gentle closer to the album, it sounds sparse and in those gaps you hear total silence from the crowd, everyone is completely captured by her performance. After huge applause we get a few older numbers too. She closes on ‘Outside The Pale’ which has now been stuck in my head since. Live, it has a lot more bite, almost teetering on being a rock song. She creates a massive chorus and sings flawlessly. After one final massive burst of applause from the crowd she’s off and the crowd falls towards the merch table.

Instead of being a celebration of Samantha Crain the artist, tonight was about her album You Had Me At Goodbye. She wants the audience to understand the context of each song and to share the experience she had making the album. Listening back to the album after the show she managed to capture the feel and the sounds of it perfectly live.
Christian Middleton

Facebook: facebook.com/Samanthacrainmusic
Twitter: twitter.com/sjcrain
Website: samanthacrain.com