Remember last Tuesday when we all had to come back to real life after a long weekend of sugary indulgences? Well, I had a really busy work day, but what relieved me was the fact that I had my name on the list for a great gig later that evening, and that was The Leisure Society playing at the Scala, which I had spent the entire previous week looking forward to.
Seeing them live was sort of like reading a book and then watching the film adaptation: all the images (well in this case vibrations) I had in mind took seconds to became concrete. An enchanting sound fell on stage and all the countless amount of instruments they make use of guaranteed an impeccable performance.
Their latest album, ‘The Sleeper’, holds a lot of great instrumental techniques and varies in the musical genres. The homonym single has a soft romantic feel with the acoustic guitars playing a sequence of music with accompanying glockenspiels in the background to make the sound really interesting. Singer and multi-instrumentalist Nick Hemming plays the sounds from the ukulele, mandolin, banjo, guitar; accompanying alongside him, the keyboardist Christian Hardy forms the core of the group, with impressive arrangements also featuring strings, flute, pedal steel, glockenspiel, thumb piano, among other instruments. It’s clear that the band all share the same vision for music. The piece is sung in synchronisation throughout, by various voices as it would sound. Taking lead vocals, Hemming’s voice is pleasant to listen to, and is clear he has had influences from bands such as ‘The Kinks’ with his use of tones.
It’s a combination played with soft, gentle sounds; it’s a very English song but has some American influences as well. The violins play smooth melodies over the bouncy rhythm of the guitars, and the gentle beat of drums play in the background. Forget counting sheep, the lyrics are repeated throughout, but as it’s called ‘The Sleeper’ you can just need something repeated over and over again to make you fall asleep.
The entire album is just beautiful and serene. Country and Western influences are clear throughout, you can really visualise an image in your mind of how and where the song would be performed and would be set-out.
Their latest single, ‘A Matter of Time’, is a fantastic and captivating song made up with a number of layering instruments all playing melodic and memorable tunes. Obviously it gets a lot better when played live, so that`s the part where we show you a piece of the gig. Enjoy!
Tags:
Album, Music, Music Reviews, The Leisure Society, The Sleeper
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