OMG, a new blog entry from Uncle Roddus. It's only been over 9 months since my last concert, where did the time go? OK, I did do the Lines Of Flight festival in Dunedin in March, but I never got around to doing a write up on that.
Anyhow, Aldous had released another new album, "Designer" a more mature and laid back work than her second and one that seems to have grown her audience and reputation even more.
Mrs Roddus and myself procured tickets for the upper level of The James Hay Theater, after the Town Hall was finally reopened earlier this year, 8 years after the big earthquake of 2011. Seating was general, so we got front row seats on the balcony level and fortunately some friends we were hoping to catchup with managed to get there in time to take some pews behind us.
The support band was Ben Woods, a band I had seen a couple of times before and although I liked their song on the Melted Ice Cream CD comp I have, I had not been all that impressed with the rest their music. This time I thought they did some more interesting stuff and that had a steel guitar fleshing things out which I don't recall the other times and some of the keyboard noodlings were pretty interesting. Their sound was still a bit murky and Ben's guitar was not loud enough and he was doing a lot of stuff with it. Still, It was the best set I had seen them do at this point.
During the break I got to catch up with my friends who were sitting behind us before Aldous took the stage first on her own, seated front and center with her acoustic guitar and did a song or two from her first LP. Then the rest of the band joined her and went through a set culled mostly from her new album. The sound was great and the band was fantastic and tight. Aldous had been touring all over the world for the last couple of years and if this was her band on those tours, it showed, they were very impressive. Aldous was quiet spoken and didn't say a hell of a lot this gig but she was in great voice and the audience were right into her music. She didn't play much from her Party album, with a couple of songs from that that both myself and my friend would have liked to hear, and her renditions of the songs did not vary much from the recorded versions. The inevitable encore was demanded and the last song of the night was a brand new song which was more uptempo and bouncy than here other stuff and I though sounded fantastic. Looks like Aldous is changing direction yet again and not for the worse either.
Another great gig from this wonderfully talented artist.
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