This gig should have taken place on Record Store Day in April, but with Billy Nomates down with something pretty horrible, instead here we are, four months later.
Not even sure who the support act was supposed to be that night, but it wasn’t tonight’s opener, because she said so.
Iona Zajac is a Scottish singer/songwriter previously unknown to BM, but she is now. The place was still pretty quiet when she came on with her guitar and started with ‘Rubbish Jubilee’.
Quite understated, her voice quite low at least at first, she has a quietly confident air. In between songs she noted that she’d been a student at Glasgow (“one of the tracks is about Woodlands” – a rather dark account of a crummy afternoon traipsing to the shops, not the most glamorous subject but IZ made it sound like an extract from a ’60 French new wave film).
She also referenced time spent as a child in Sweden before ‘Murder Mystery’ – BM doesn’t not think many if any of these tracks are released yet but there are very good indeed – unshowy but confident guitar playing and a very expressive voice which she really only let rip in the last couple of numbers. For one track, the trad.arr ballad ‘Burning Of Achendoon’, she deployed an electronic keyboard, firstly to mimic the single note backing of a pipe or accordion, then to play through a chord pattern after the lyric. As she said, it didn’t show Lord Huntly in a good light but she apologised to any of that clan in the audience due to the eventual outcome of the song (the clan castle gets “burnt to F***”).
Several further tracks showed a more forthright side to the songwriting and the last one railed against the misdeeds of the youthful males of her past. There was a real maturity in some of this work and BM would maybe draw a comparison with Emma Pollok, while ‘Burning…’ for BM channelled a fair bit of the dearly departed Sinead.
The place filled up a good bit by the time BNM appeared around 8.45pm (it was officially sold out but the rearranged date, holidays and bad weather meant it didn’t feel overcrowded).
Immediately apologising for the previous cancellation Tor launched into ‘fawner’ while strumming an acoustic guitar. This could have been interpreted as a righteous “f— you” to the keyboard warriors and general arseholes who slagged off her televised Glastonbury appearance with jibes like “she can’t play” and “she uses backing tapes” – for the record BM is firmly on the side of any artist doing exactly what they want so long as they are not pretending to be something that they aren’t, and of course it is mainly female artists who get this type of crap, presumably because all men are brilliant guitarists (the “guitar Ken” in the Barbie movie comes to mind…).
Anyway after this it was down to the usual format for BNM, tried and tested – the music starts, she starts moving and then she starts singing. There were 17 tracks in all, including a one-song encore, mainly from most recent release ‘Cacti’ but also a smattering from previous releases as well.
The programming was designed to bring a couple of highs (more up-tempo, bigger choruses) like ‘Balance Is Gone’ plus some more reflective moments. During the hour or so’s performance Tor was a ball of energy, channelling vulnerability, raw sexuality and blind fury (to name but several elements), acting out the lyrics, prancing like a ballerina one minute and pummelling the air like a boxer the next.
The format could have become a bit samey but the degree of nuance and span even in relatively sparse tracks shows the effort and skill put into it.
Deploying a cymbal on one track but aside from that using just her voice and movements, Tor took the audience along with her through the emotions. Drawing to a climactic end she hammed her way through ‘Hippy Elite’ like a hyper-real Joni Mitchell, fought the demons on dark revenge fantasy ‘Right Behind You’ (“he had it coming”) and tore strips off the unfortunate but deserving victim of ‘Spite’.
Coming back on to shouts of “one more tune” she vowed she’d be back but suggested she was “killing off Billy Nomates” before a final “Escape Artist”, so we will see what happens next. In the meantime the tour souvenir mugs were down to half price so maybe it really is the end for the moniker and brand – if so it has been a fantastic and emotive experience.