Billed as a show that brings together two of America’s great young wanderers, Stephen Steinbrink and Julie Byrne played downstairs at The Globe pub for an ultra-intimate co-headline show.
Beginning the show was the wonderful Julie Byrne who has credited Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Northampton, Massachusetts, Chicago, Illinois, Seattle, New Orleans and New York as her home in recent years. It is these travels and her near constant time spent on the road that she takes inspiration from for her songs of stories and troubles. Her debut and only album to date, Room With Walls And Windows (January 2014), showcases her amazing talent for writing otherworldly, delicate and cathartic music that has unsurprisingly been likened to a modern day Linda Perhacs or Vashti Bunyan.
The lucky few that secured a seat in the cosy venue were treated to a transfixing set. Unlike a typical concert, speakers were at both the front and back of the room so you had the unique sensation of her music surrounding the audience, which was an utter delight to the ears and made any lingering stress of the day disappear from the room in an instant. Performing with her “associate” Eric Littmann, who played occasional synths, the pair commanded everyone’s attention and brought a rare comforting silence that had the crowd hanging on every word and note. At times Julie would get lost in her own hypnotic trace as she created beautiful finger picking melodies, her fingers elegantly dancing across the guitar fret board creating a wondrous dreamy sound. Her angelic sound is definitely reminiscent of past female singer-songwriters of the 1960s, mainly due to the drawn back nature to her sound which is mostly just her voice and guitar with very few effects. Due to the nature of the music Julie plays, I felt that her marvellous voice was almost being limited and not being allowed to hit its full potential. That said, her music and live performance was still absolutely stunning and compelling throughout.
I first came across Stephen Steinbrink with his song ‘Synesthetic Ephemera’, a phenomenal track in my eyes, which put me onto his most recent album Arranged Waves (July 2014) which is fantastic from start to finish. Having been born and raised in the sun-scorched deserts of Arizona, and currently splitting his time floating between California and Washington, as well as now having spent the best part of a decade touring on the road, you can’t help feeling the whimsical and nostalgic tones that have shaped his sound.
I felt sorry for Stephen when he started as late comers to the audience just would not shut up. Even with the whole room starring evil daggers at the culprits, they continued to try and speak over his mellow and gentle sound. Not ideal seeing as it was just him and his guitar, but once I had put that annoyance someway to the back of my mind, I was able to enjoy the talent that is Stephen Steinbrink. His songs ranged from the buoyant and uplifting sounds that come through in his amazing fingerpicking song-writing, to the more downtempo and haunting tracks where he used jarring feedback to great effect, but they always maintained an old skool Simon & Garfunkel feel. There is a great openness to the way Stephen performs, and whereas his album is covered in an assortment of production effects and instruments, when it is just him on stage you get a special insight into his genuine lyrics which match his clever song structures. Drunken banter somewhat killed the atmosphere once again near the shows close, and it never really got back to what it was. Stephen handled it very well but I’m sure he couldn’t wait to finish, a real shame as the finale song and his newest single (the ironically named, ‘I Don’t Know How To Deal With It’) was one of the highlights of his set.
Iain Lauder