Kathleen Edwards and Bon Iver at Hammersmith Apollo

This was the first time I went to a concert specifically to see the support act. I do like all three of Kathleen Edwards' albums and seeing her perform live seemed like a chance too good to miss, even though only as the support. Her performance, with the accompaniment of only two other guitarists and no percussion did nothing for the vast expanses of the Apollo, was not helped by the background noise of a thousand people talking loudly throughout the set. So her plaintive, and often quiet, songs were not really suitable for the venue. Things were better when rocking through her uptempo pieces. Her 45 minute performance felt too short, but the audience were all there to see the main act. One positive feature from her set was what I presume were songs from her new album due out in January. They were all great, so looking forward to that.

I had listened to bits of Bon Iver's latest album on Spotify, and thought it was not really my kind of music. I made up my mind to listen to a couple of numbers but ended up staying over an hour. This is one band who are obviously brilliant live. Nine musicians including two drummers can really make some noise. And when they go into mainstream mode (which is less than half the time) they produce a powerful and awesome sound. If only their songs were all like that. But overall, I was very impressed.