Steve 'n' Seagulls at The Fleece - Bristol Live Music Review
Posted on: 2017-03-29
Our rating:
Having wowed the crowds at the likes of Munich and Stuttgart before hopping on a plane to amaze the masses at venues in Newcastle, Leeds and Nottingham, they took to the stage of The Fleece for an epic night.
It's a gig I never thought I'd go to. Finland's version of The Wurzels, as they're allegedly purported to be. (That's also a sentence I never thought I'd ever write.) But, like so many things in our varied and unpredictable existence, sometimes you just have to grab the gig-going bull by the horns, embrace the experience and enjoy it. Which is precisely what I did when I sauntered through the hallowed doors of The Fleece on Tuesday 28 March for an evening of sensational country and bluegrass coolness courtesy of the fabulous five-piece Steve 'n' Seagulls.
On paper, it sounds utterly ridiculous: bluegrass covers of classic hard rock and heavy metal songs. In reality though, it's a mesmerizing soundworld and something to truly behold, their musicianship quite staggering and the initial novelty factor far belying their true, genuine talent. Voluminous reverence was aplenty too; the gig was a sell-out.
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Having wowed the crowds at the likes of Munich and Stuttgart before hopping on a plane to amaze the masses at venues in Newcastle, Leeds and Nottingham, they took to the stage of The Fleece for an epic night of cool covers performed to an audience of the cult band's acolytes and admirers.
The band gained social media notoriety, YouTube style, with a 31 million-hit version of AC/DC's Thunderstruck and two albums in the form of Farm Machine and Brother in Farms, and the denim onesie-sporting quintet unleashed their wonderful world of acoustic cover-laden wackiness to the likes of Offspring's Self Esteem, Guns 'n' Roses Paradise City and You Could Be Mine, Metallica's Sad But True, AC/DC's It A Long Way To The Top, and Gary Moore's Over The Hills And Far Away.
They might be something of a cult band - and with that, of course, usually comes a certain element of kitsch gimmick - but their fun-loving esprit de corps and bonhomie was just as entertaining as the crowd's reverence; charming, musically consummate and nothing less than riveting. Who'd have thought that interpretations of songs by Iron Maiden and Foo Fighters would have sounded so wonderful cyphered through instrumental conduits such as the accordion, mandolin, balalaika and banjo?
Nothing less than consistently marvelous, their already adoring admirers have found a new fan. Brilliant.
5/5
Check out all the other great events at The Fleece
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Jamie is a writer, blogger, journalist, critic, film fan, soundtrack nerd and all-round Bristolian good egg. He loves the music of Philip Glass, the art of Salvador Dali, the writings of Charles Bukowksi and Hunter S Thompson, the irreverence of Harry Hill, and the timeless, straw-chomping exuberance of The Wurzels. You can sometimes find him railing against a surging tide of passing cyclists, or gorging himself senseless on the Oriental delights of a Cosmos all-you-can-eat buffet.
