After the multi platinum
album ‘Hand Built by Robots’ Newton Faulkner takes to the
road. Tonight at Exeter is the opening night of his UK Tour.
Tonight was a complete sell out and if you were lucky enough
to get a ticket you would have seen first hand why this guy is
the next biggest thing is British music.
The Great Hall is
situated on Exeter University Campus under the shadow of the
Northcott Theatre, it is one of these wonderful venues where
regardless of how full it is it is almost impossible to get a
bad view.
The stage set in itself
was very basic with a lot of focus on atmospheric lighting,
which personally I do like a lot as all the emphasis was on
the music. The support for tonight show came from Angus and
Julia Stone a wonderfully talented brother and sister, which
was the perfect opening act. There music has very strong folk
routes typically two acoustic guitarist with Julia playing
blistering solos on the trumpet and harmonica. Very earthy and
their vocals together was very reminiscent of Ricky Ross &
Loraine Macintosh of Deacon Blue. The harmonies were haunting
and their brief set elevated nicely. At the bottom of this
review there is the link for their myspace site.
Newton Faulkner took to
the stage to an absolute thunderous reception, armed with just
his acoustic guitar. He started the show with a brief
instrumental which was the opening track of the album. Right
from the offset Newton was using his acoustic guitar for
percussion which was met by a rapturous applause. It was
amazing to watch a solo singer captivate an audience,
mesmerised and hypnotic, something I have only witnessed when
I saw Bob Dylan, yet the strength of the songs and how
cleverly thought out the concert was equally jaw dropping as
it was inspiring. You could hear murmurs of people stood next
to you just saying ‘how the hell does he do that’. Most of the
songs the crowd were singing them word for word, which for a
relatively new artist speaks volumes of just how big this
gentleman is going to be. The new album was played in its
entirety and 80% acoustically. ‘I Need Something’ & ‘ Dream
Catch Me’ were some of the highlights along with ‘Teardrop’
which is a cult classic from the masters of trip hop Massive
Attack.
Occasionally he would
bring on a bass player and a drummer just to lift some songs.
Along with captivating
the audience, Newton injected a lot of humour, not so much
jokes just satires and irony about life, music and what
inspired him to do what he does so well. He played a funny
rendition of ‘no-limits’ which was by Dutch techno outfit
2-unlimited along with the Dead or Alive classis ‘You Spin me
Round’. One of the most loveable things about Newton Faulkner
is that he is not just another casualty of
Brit pop and he doesn’t
take himself too seriously. The night before the show he was
at the Brit awards and he made a few references where he
simply didn’t know how to act on an occasion of such
pompousness and ego! The sense of irony is
that half of the bands
there weren’t fit to hold his guitar! Most of the bands today
use an acoustic guitar to work out a song – this show is about
that acoustic guitar and I have never seen anyone use a guitar
like he does. Some of the songs were deeply intense like
‘Uncomfortably Slow’ and ‘People Should Smile More’. It was
almost a journey between laughter and tears and the great
thing was that there wasn’t a single person in the room that
couldn’t associate to what he was doing.
