Martyn Joseph Solo Show – Hitchin Folk Club – 12 June 2011 – Review

The whole show was exquisitely pitched ,and the mix of songs were perfect .There was a great freedom to the night and if truth be told everyone in there would have been happy if we were locked in and he carried on to sun up , well everyone sat in rapt attention of the magician on stage , I don’t know if it would have gone down well with the people trying to sleep in the hotel plus Martyn would have been on his knees . There were so many highlights  and too many to mention them all , he had us rocking , ranting , singing  and in emotional pieces , there was some great Funky stuff on Invisible Angel , jaw dropping virtuoso guitar playing on an increasingly battered but beautifully sounding Lowden on so many other songs. The biggest  highlight was the new song ;which is another of Martyns masterpieces I reckon , Still Alot Of Love (?) The performance Sunday night was incredible . Sometimes with a new song you struggle to hang on lines , you try and grasp that fleeting sense of something special as it happens but you can’t quite remember what it is about it  but you know it was very powerful , then other times as the other night they hit you directly and so hard that you know you will wake up the next morning and remember them, well this was instantly memorable. The first line is  something like  ‘Light cracks the sky and your kiss breaks my fall’  , it’s just stunning.  It is a beautiful empowering, uplifting  but reflective song, and the icing on it last night was the singing, we were carrying the chorus,150+ people in full voice, which was  just beautiful itself, then on top of that wave of massed voices, Martyn just soared above us, he is really taking his voice into different zones of his range these days and its  just …WOW !

During the interval several notes were left on the stage for requests as well as a couple he had received earlier , and this lead to one of the best mini set of songs I have heard. Seahorse , was lovely , gently coaxing us onto this rollercoaster of Nemesis proportions , Seahorse has that breath  of fresh air about it , with it’s gorgeous bell like guitar and incredibly calming quality. Then he hits us with Have an Angel Walk with Her, always a favourite  live , he was only going to do a couple of verses but ended up playing the whole song. THEN Kindness, now this song for me is still one of his finest ever and it’s been a long time, or seems a long time since I have heard it live so it was a huge treat and it’s lost none of its potency since he first played it 4 years ago…the whispered lines and those opening chords ……..brilliant !