Artists: Hayley Griffiths Band / IO Earth
Venue: Southampton: 1865
Date: 8th October 2024
"A brilliant evening’s entertainment and absolutely first-rate performances from all the members of both bands."
On a very wet and stormy day, I drove the sixty miles through torrential rain, flooded roads and road closures to Southampton. The 1865 is in my top three list of favourite venues. The sound level and the overall sound quality are always very good. There is some seating at selected gigs, and tonight there are lots of seats and tables as befitting a night of Prog. There are about a hundred people present, and some people wearing IO Earth and Hayley Griffiths T-Shirts. This concert is special for a few reasons; it is a double headlining tour, with Griffiths doing vocal duties for IO Earth as well as her own band, and this is IO Earth’s first gig since the disastrous July 2024 fire in the warehouse next to their studio that destroyed both their studio and all their musical equipment. They have since managed to raise some money via a crowd funding page. IO Earth were new to me. After a bit of research then I was surprised to find out that they have had at least six albums released and have been around since 2009.
The evening started promptly at 19.30, with IO Earth taking to the stage. They started with ‘Running’, which had the guitarist Dave Cureton sharing some of the vocals with Griffiths and performing a tremendous guitar solo. There was a screen behind the band showing their music videos to each song, and it was interesting to notice that the vocals on the video were synchronising perfectly with what was being sung live, even though it was two different vocalists. In between the songs, Cureton introduced the next song and which album it was from, which was great information for people like me that did not know their full catalogue.
Griffiths’ vocals were perfect for the style and the pitch of IO Earth’s music, and she gelled in perfectly with the rest of the band. They played a variety of songs from most of their albums, and the musicianship of all the band members was exemplary. At one time, the band left the stage to leave Griffiths and Adam Gough, the keyboard player to perform ‘Close By’; a lovely song that really showcased Griffith’s vocals and Gough’s beautiful keyboard playing. The highlight of the set for me was ‘The Rising’. This is a long instrumental, mainly on guitar, but it also included keyboards. It is about 9/11 and the video playing behind them showed the whole of the events that happened that day. A perfectly timed soaring guitar solo started at the same time as the second plane crashed into one of the towers. The instrumental continued as more events were happening on the video and then finished with the video showing the replacement tower rebuilt at ground zero. It was very emotional and very moving. The set finished with ‘Outside’ and ‘Harmonix’, two huge slabs of Prog Rock perfectly performed by the band. They had been on for around 75 minutes and were fully appreciated by the audience. Check them out.
Griffiths and her band came onto the stage at 21.00, and opened up with ‘Haunted’. A great Prog song with Griffith’s vocals set up perfectly in the mix. Again the music video is played on the backdrop. The use of the smoke machines either side of the stage and the tasteful lighting added to the intensity of the track. Throughout the set, the band performed mainly tracks from her last album. However they were interspersed with songs from her other solo album that saw her performing three Celtic songs. ‘Loch Lomond’ had the bass player George Price using a fiddle to play his bass guitar, whilst Griffiths demonstrated her classical music trained voice on this lovely Celtic song. The other two Celtic tracks were ‘Black Is The Colour’, that saw her performing with the guitarist, Matthieu Spater on acoustic guitar, and the beautiful lullaby ‘Caledonia’. There were so many great songs performed, but if I had to choose a few then it was; ‘Seperated By Glass’, a powerful song with terrific shredded guitar playing, ‘Last Goodbye’ with the whole band going for it, and ‘Dust To Gold’, with Jimmy Pallagrosi on drums playing frantically.
The final song was ‘Melanie’, always a good crowd pleaser. They finished it and the band, except for Pallagrosi, left the stage. After a prompt from Griffiths, Pallagrosi then did his superb and entertaining drum solo, before being joined by Spater on guitar and jamming. The band then returned to perform ‘Borderline’, a Karnataka song that Griffiths and Pallagrosi had played on originally. There were calls for an encore after the band had finished, but the lights in the venue came on signifying the end of the concert. The show had finished at 22.40.
A brilliant evening’s entertainment and absolutely first-rate performances from all the members of both bands.
Review by: Paul Gregory
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