AMA UK 17 Showcase – Amanda Rheaume and Wild Ponies

5 stars (out of 5)

0

Amanda review scrollerSo the Americana Music Association UK awards and showcase rolls around again. It was back to Hackney, and this time the event was spread over three venues. Potential for clashes there but when the line-up was published, everything was fine. My two must-sees didn’t clash, so all systems were go for Amanda Rheaume at Paper Dress Vintage and Wild Ponies finishing the event at Moth Club. All I needed was two superb performances and my night would be complete. Spoiler alert; both bands were exceptional.

I’d visited Paper Dress Vintage in its previous location in Shoreditch and, yes, it’s a quirky combination of vintage clothes shop and gig venue. At least in the Hackney incarnation the bands don’t play in the window with a bus station as a backdrop. Amanda Rheaume has been touring the UK with guitar/pedal steel player Anders Drerup and bass player Anna Ruddick in support of her “Holding Patterns” album and they’re a potent live combination, creating a punchy live sound with help of some great harmonies and stomping foot percussion. The songs sound great on the album but the tight, punchy live sound was even better and a packed venue made for a memorable set, with the band tearing through a short showcase set (including the album opener “Get to the Part”, “Wolf of Time” and the relationship song “Dead Horse”) and leaving the audience wanting more. Amanda’s voice has a slightly rawer, raunchier quality in the live setting and her introductions established a genuine rapport between audience and performers.

Wild Ponies (Doug and Telisha Williams) enlisted the help of a British drummer to augment the line-up for their festival-closing set and closed out in epic style; it was a proper festival headliner set taken mainly from their 2016 album “Radiant” (which certainly is). They eased the audience in gently with “Born with a Broken Heart”, the album’s opening track before letting Mike Pence have both barrels with “Love Is Not a Sin”. They bravely slowed down the set with a beautiful new ballad “Hearts and Bones” before taking the Moth roof off with a storming version of “Unplug the Machine”, one of my favourite songs of 2016.

Both of these artists had cracking albums out last year. You should give them a listen and watch out for their next appearance near you. You can see some pictures of Amanda Rheaume at Paper Dress Vintage here and some Wild Ponies pictures from Moth here. Now, when’s the next gig?

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