She Keeps Bees – The Wilmington Arms, London 10/09/09

On the 10th of September I headed down to a tiny pub (The Wilmington Arms in Islington) to see one of my favourite live acts of the year, Brooklyn’s She Keeps Bees. Having not seen them since their storming set at Green Man, I was eager for more of the same. Jessica Larrabee is a volatile performer, becoming noted for her low self confidence on stage, and is always seemingly close to having a complete breakdown, anything could happen.

Before the arrival of She Keeps Bees on stage, there were two support acts to keep the audience entertained. First on was Patrick Bower, with simple guitar accompanied by a keyboard making ambient noises Bower has to rely on the strength of his voice and lyrics to carry his performance through. Despite his voice having a nice quality to it, it is far from spectacular. His lyrics are however pleasant, and hold up the music making him an enjoyable, if not completely compelling act to watch.

Twi the Humble Feather were however a little bit different, an acoustic guitar trio, who solely rely on guitar (with the odd use of keyboard) vocal harmonies to create their music. Their music has a constant feel of pace about it, percussive vocals making them soundly oddly like a train. It’s difficult to get away from the feeling that Twi the Humble Feather make what is essentially soundtrack music, but it is excellent soundtrack music and I certainly enjoyed watching them.

After Jessica and Andy had pushed their way through the crowd, She Keeps Bees took to the stage. Playing a set almost entirely derived from their recent excellent (but divisive) album Nests, they played a forceful set. ‘Gimmie’, as well as traditional closer ‘Ribbon’ were particular highlights. However this was not particularly distinct from the previous times I have seen them, the set following (I think) pretty much exactly the same script as their Green Man performance. Much of the fun of seeing She Keeps Bees is contained in the between song banter of Jessica, and she was on particularly good form tonight. Excitedly babbling about her Mother, recently disastrous gigs, how she ate a ball of mozzarella and how terrifying she must be to us, she gathered many laughs from the audience. It’s a slightly baffling experience watching her, and there is the constant fear that she’ll explode in a flurry of panic, and be unable to play. She does seem to be awfully close to this point at times, taking for example 5 attempts to start one song. Maybe this detracts from the main point of the gig, the music (after all, if I wanted some stand up comedy, I’d see some stand up). But, watching Jessica (either play music, or just mess about on stage) is such an entertaining experience that She Keeps Bees have easily become one of my very favourite live acts.