At 10 pm on 8 April 2024, there was a knock on my front door. Opening it, I was astonished to see two paramedics on my doorstep and an ambulance at the end of the driveway. I was even more horrified to discover that it was not some clerical error and they were genuinely there to take me to hospital. Whilst I was feeling below par and had been for blood tests at the doctor’s surgery in the afternoon, I had not anticipated requiring emergency treatment. Subsequent investigations showed that I had non-Hodgkin lymphoma and Stage Three kidney disease, as well as blood pressure rising to 250, although I defy anyone to not have soaring blood pressure when an ambulance turns up at their house unannounced.
Two years later, I feel blessed to be in remission and well enough to travel to gigs. As such, my trip to Liverpool Philharmonic Music Rooms is a celebration of the anniversary. My main aim being to see Annie Dressner, favourite of the Riley and Coe franchise, but tonight’s support act. The drawback of going to see an opening act is they will be granted a shorter set and have more of a struggle for the audience’s attention. A further obstacle on this occasion is that my allocated seat is right at the back of the venue. Fortunately, though, the acoustics are immaculate and Dressner’s voice is clear and sharp but with a touching vulnerability. She wastes not a moment of her half hour slot, her seven-song set begins with ‘Nyack’ from her 2020 ‘Coffee At The Corner Bar’ album, a reflection on the too quiet area 40-minutes outside of New York where she was brought up. As a songwriter, her approach tends to the autobiographical, as reflected in ‘Leather Chair’, a fingerpicked ode to her grandmother, one of three songs taken from her excellent 2024 release, ‘I Thought It Would Be Easier’. The set includes her dazzling 2025 single, ‘The Thrill Of It’, a surprisingly buoyant critique of misogyny in the music industry, as well as current single, ‘Dumb Boy’ which is a bit of a stomper, although the live version is quieter and her attempts to start a singalong founder on audience shyness. The set ends with ‘Black and White’, another trip back to her New York roots, although she is now based in Cambridge, England.
The merchandise stall is by the venue entrance / exit. Visiting it to purchase CDs and pick up one of her homemade pencils, marked “PROUDLY MADE IN NEW YORK CITY ANNIE DRESSNER INDIE CORE”, I am disconcerted to see someone laid out on the floor being attended to by paramedics with ambulance lights flashing. It does create a flashback for me, although I also marvel at the human capacity to carry on with ordinary life while emergencies are within touching distance. It feels like a metaphor for the current geopolitical situation. I can only hope that, like me, the ill person is able to look back on 8 April as a new beginning.
When the tour was announced, I was unfamiliar with Kris Drever, although he is widely acclaimed having been a four-time winner of the BBC Radio Two Folk Awards with his band, Lau, as well as being the 2017 Folk Singer of the Year. Even though they might sit next to each other alphabetically in a record collection and in the live arena both use a simple guitar and vocal set up, Dressner and Drever are notably different. While a Venn diagram of Dressner’s music would see folk, country, pop and even a small smattering of indie intersecting, Drever’s would involve folk and modern acoustic categories overlapping.
Drever proves to be an intelligent, thoughtful and witty performer. His playing is phenomenal and complex but with an impressive sense of dynamics. The set mixes original compositions with traditional songs, including one dating back 200 years and a fiddle wedding march played on guitar. There are songs from his forthcoming album, ‘Doing This For Love’ (to be released on 10 April 2026), a standout being ‘Bring Back Hanging Around’ which mischievously has a gap after the word ‘hanging’ and before ‘around’ and another pause before ‘with friends.’ Other songs including lines condemning Tory politicians, always liable to be a particularly popular sentiment in Liverpool, and themes including whaling and conservation. There is plenty of chat about his Orkney background and one of the night’s best songs, ‘Scapa Flow 1919’, is about the scuttling of a German boat off Orkney. Written at the time of Brexit, it was deliberately written from the perspective of an ordinary German soldier and is indicative of how he uses songs to show what can be learnt from history.
However, while Drever’s voice has undoubted power, there is a dryness to it which meant that although there is plenty to admire and I am glad to have seen him, Dressner’s songs moved me more and I cannot wait for a headline set from her in the future.
Their tour continues throughout April, coming to Greater Manchester on 11 April at The Met, BURY before continuing at:
12 April – Puppet Theatre, NORWICH
15 April – Eden Court, INVERNESS
17 April – Mareel, SHETLAND ISLANDS
21 April – The Tin Arts Centre, COVENTRY
22 April – Folk Club, GRAYSHOTT
23 April – The Bear Club, LUTON
24 April – Storey’s Field, CAMBRIDGE
25 April – Firth Hall, SHEFFIELD
30 April – Queen’s Hall, EDINBURGH
I was editor of the long-running fanzine, Plane Truth, and have subsequently written for a number of publications. While the zine was known for championing the most angular independent sounds, performing in recent years with a community samba percussion band helped to broaden my tastes so that in 2021 I am far more likely to be celebrating an eclectic mix of sounds and enthusing about Made Kuti, Anthony Joseph, Little Simz and the Soul Jazz Cuban compilations as well as Pom Poko and Richard Dawson.
