Admiral Fallow
+ Matthew P
Sunday 27 May : 8pm
£8.00 adv : £10.00 door
Listen to the brand new Admiral Fallow album (released on 21st May) here
“Devastatingly downtrodden and wonderfully uplifting. . . surprising and enthralling. . . finely crafted material played superbly well” (Mike Diver, BBC Album Reviews Editor)
“Anthemic yet understated. Big and bold, but avoiding theatrical cheese. Every note serves a purpose and has its place, nothing is wasted and nothing is missed.” (Music-News.com)
The toast of 2011′s South By Southwest festival (tipped in advance by NPR’s influential All Songs Considered; ranked as a highlight by US indie bible Paste magazine), Scotland’s Admiral Fallow continue their seemingly unstoppable mission to capture hearts and minds. They steal the former with beautiful melodies, sumptuous orchestration and bittersweet boy/girl vocals, while unforgettably colonising the latter thanks to lead singer/guitarist Louis Abbott’s exquisitely observed, hauntingly candid lyrics.
Completed by fellow vocalist Sarah Hayes (also flute, piano), Kevin Brolly (clarinet, keyboards, backing vocals), Joe Rattray (bass, double bass, backing vocals) and Philip Hague (drums, vibraphone, backing vocals), Admiral Fallow’s richly distinctive mesh of acoustic and electric textures with multilayered harmonies has gained a fast-expanding fanbase either side of the Pond, prominently including Guillemots’ Fyfe Dangerfield, Elbow’s Guy Garvey, Radio 1′s Huw Stephens and BBC2′s ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris.
Having met while studying at university in Glasgow, Admiral Fallow formed in 2007 (as the Brother Louis Collective: the name-change came in early 2010), through a shared love of such left-field luminaries as Tom Waits, Low, Midlake, Elbow, King Creosote and Bruce Springsteen – all filtered through Abbott’s unflinchingly personal, resolutely Scottish sensibility.
As well as support slots with the Futureheads, Paolo Nutini, King Creosote, the Felice Brothers and Frightened Rabbit, highlights among their own headline gigs included a triumphant London show in September, of which editor Paul Kramer wrote in The Hit Sheet: “The award for the best of the new acts we have seen perform recently goes to Admiral Fallow. Their excellent set at the Lexington had publishers and A&R out in force. We expect them to be huge. Led by the engaging and captivating future star that is frontman Louis Abbott, they will soon have the world at their feet.”
The diversity of musical contexts in which they’ve featured points directly to the breadth of Admiral Fallow’s appeal and their genre-spanning calibre of musicianship. Abbott has worked those childhood and adolescent memories, with their attendant soul-searching, into songs which strike a universal chord, across the full emotional register from euphoria to anguish, often articulating the complex, ambivalent overlap between the two. His reticently guarded, soulfully vulnerable vocals are vibrantly complemented by his bandmates’ alternately lush and sparing contributions, highlighted in the fragile, barely-accompanied ‘Delivered’ and the epic, distorted orchestral finale of ‘Bomb Through the Town’.
As the band continue to attract admiring comparisons to Arcade Fire and Frightened Rabbit, while forging a sound that brims with originality, now is the time to catch them – before they’re huge.
“The perfect musical storm: depth, strength of feeling and technical skill in one sublime package.” (Stereokill.net)
“A veritable masterclass in dark-hued yet uplifting, catchily literate roots-pop” (The Herald)
“So good, so dark, so beautiful” (Daniel P. Carter, BBC Radio 1)
