Frazey Ford plays Brudenell: cool country for an icy evening

As she strides on-stage, Frazey Ford nonchalantly places her glass of red wine on the speaker positioned next to her and leans over her guitar into the mic. “We’re gonna play some songs,” she says. “That’s how this goes.”

It’s a cool start to an icy night. Many of the crowd, as Ford acknowledges, have faced treacherous roads and slippery pavement to get to the thrice-rearranged gig tonight. After an 18-month wait, both anticipation and expectations are high. Just as well then that the country singer more than exceeds the bar set for her.

The Canadian songstress first garnered acclaim as a founding member of the alt-folk band The Be Good Tanyas  and saw much success throughout the noughties (including headlining the Royal Albert Hall in 2006) before striking out on her own in 2010. Since then, much of her solo work has paired confessional storytelling with soul-tinged Americana to create a catalog that is laidback, comforting yet somehow melancholic.  

Ambling through her setlist, Ford creates a space that feels relaxed and intimate, although there is still a sense that each song is born from a considered place of raw emotion. Switching out her acoustic to sit at her keyboard, her vocals simmer over the soulful grooves of her back band during ‘Azad’, a song dedicated to and named after Ford’s sister. What’s interesting though is that new tracks like these pack as much of a punch as old favourites like empowering breakup anthem ‘Done’ and ‘September Fields’, a lament on life’s purpose marinated in a bouncy swing of interplaying guitars.

The show draws to a close as Ford returns to the keyboard for ‘U Kin B The Sun’, the title track of her most recent album. Through both her honeyed vocals and sweet repartie with the crowd, the singer crafts story after story to begin to weave a picture of her innermost thoughts and feelings. However, Frazey Ford’s biggest strength is being warm enough to draw her audience in while retaining a coolness that keeps us gasping for more.

In pictures: Shame conquer Leeds with a defiant performance

The energy and grit radiating from Shame frontman Charlie Steen is a sight to behold. Spotted in the smoking area just a few minutes before their set, it was a zero to one hundred transition from his calm off-stage persona into the shirtless machine that proceeded to dominate the stage all night.

Lucy Spraggan wows crowds with an intimate acoustic set at The Warehouse

Almost a decade since she first graced our screens, Lucy Spraggan played an acoustic show at The Warehouse on the 4th of November. With support coming from Billy Lockett, a Northampton-based singer-songwriter, the night was a roaring success. In the intimate set, she took the audience through the story of her career. A showcase highlighting the ups and downs of her journey from the X-Factor stage to her latest album Choices.

Heirs to the Throne: DMA’S wrap up mammoth UK run in Leeds

‘Never Before’ (if you’ll excuse the pun) has a band from the other side of the world slotted in so perfectly into the indie scene of the North of England. DMA’S – the honorary Northerners, who actually hail from Australia – finally brought their seminal third album The Glow to our shores with a colossal UK tour that climaxed with two sold-out nights at O2 Academy Leeds.

The reports from Manchester and London’s Alexandra Palace were outstanding. Tales of the best shows of their lives, and of frontman Tommy O’Dell’s voice levelling up to unprecedented heights, were proved incredibly accurate as the band stacked the first part of the set with new material. Matt Mason’s lead tone roared through ‘Dawning’ after the crowd was sent into pandemonium during ‘The Glow’, a mighty release of pent up emotion after such a long wait to hear the track live.

Two offerings from their surprise EP I Love You Unconditionally, Sure Am Going To Miss You came in the form of the epic, nostalgic ‘We Are Midnight’ and the sombre ‘Junk Truck Head Fuck’. In a genre where so many fade into mediocrity, the songwriting ability of these three talents has risen to new heights on each occasion, with their sound a distinct but direct evolution of their dearly loved earlier work.

‘Delete’ and ‘Silver’, as expected, saw the crowd take control with perhaps the loudest sing-along the Academy has seen in recent history, yet it was ‘Hello Girlfriend’ that stole the night. Sounding absolutely gigantic in the flesh, the pounding drums and driving rhythm makes one wonder why the glorious track was not released as a single.

Which brings us to the inevitable climax of ‘Play It Out’ and ‘Feels Like 37’, two tracks that epitomise why DMA’S are such an unbelievable live band. Mason’s enormous tone transforms the room into a stadium, and the magnificent instrumentals of these two tracks, in particular, solidify just why DMA’S will soon be filling arenas and stadiums all over the UK, inheriting the void left by the megastars of the North who came before.