It’s been a while since I was at the Liquid Rooms. The venue has just opened after refurbishment following the fire in Christmas 2008, which badly burned the restaurant upstairs and the ensuing water damage affected the Liquid Rooms. But it’s great to see one of Edinburgh’s best venues up and running once more, a place where I have been more times than I can count in the nine years since I moved to Edinburgh.
First up tonight, the support act are the wonderful Sparrow and the Workshop. The Glasgow-based three-piece issued a fine debut in Crystals Fall. Their country-spaghetti-western feel (and I mean that as a compliment) wins the crowd over, with songs like ‘Crystals’ and ‘Into The Wild.’
Broken Records’ lead singer Jamie Sutherland talks about tonight as being a “happy sad occasion”. Sad, in the sense that Gill Dave ‘Gill’ Fothergill is leaving for “pastures new” while cellist Arne Kolb is returning to Germany for “reasons of love.” So it’s an emotion-packed show, which is utterly, utterly euphoric.
The set is interspersed with tracks from the new album Let Me Come Home and last year’s Until The Earth Begins To Part. Head Sparrow Jill O’Sullivan adds her bewitching vocals to one track which is one of those moments.
And over a year since the release of their debut record, still it weaves its magic. It’s still so sweet and fresh. Jamie dedicates ‘Wolves’ to Graeme from the Kays Lavelle for coming to see them and not Phoenix. Arne’s cello on ‘If Eilert Loevborg Wrote A Song It Would Sound Like This’ is described as being his finest hour with the band, and it most certainly is. Debut single ‘If The News Makes You Sad, Don’t Watch It’ and album opener ‘Nearly Home’ threaten to bring the roof off all over again.
They encore with a version of ‘Slow Parade’ which is more Buckley-esque than the album version (both Buckleys, since you ask). And we walk home, still on a high the next morning.