– GORILLA, MANCHESTER –
Not knowing too much about The Staveley-Taylor sisters before tonight, I must admit that I was expecting some delicate folky characters with wispy hair and long floral dresses to take to the stage.
But happily, that was not to be the case with this Watford trio. After a timid start, Emily (vocals & “magic box thingy”), Jessica (vocals & guitar) and Camilla (vocals & ukelele) soon warm to the crowd with their witty banter between tracks really going down well, regaling us with stories of how their father taught them to play the guitar on just the bottom two strings. That is why the first song they wrote is thus played.
Could it be that it is the last night of their UK tour and they are ready to party? Or are they just 3 sisters enjoying their eventual emergence into the spot-light of folk/pop stardom?
In the afterglow of other waistcoat wearing, ceiling staring, less enigmatic folk mafia that have stolen the limelight in recent years, it will be nice to see these lively young ladies start to pick up the accolades.
And there could be none greater to start with than to have been invited to appear on Tom Jones’s 2010 Praise & Blame album.
So they fire through their discography with pace delivering ‘Facing West’, ‘Winter Trees’ and ‘Mexico’ with faultless harmonies that Fry, Henley, Leadon & Meisner (The Eagles) would have been proud of. Their vocals swirling and reverberating around the arched ceiling of Gorilla, creating an almost cathedral like sound.
These girls don’t take themselves too seriously either with an in-promptu hip hop cover. I genuinely don’t know what it is, but the crowd seem to love it, and threats of their own version of ‘The Fresh Prince Theme’, we all know that don’t we?
So towards the end the girls and their ‘men folk’ on keys and drums, loosen up even more and pass round a bottle of Jamesons to toast the close of their tour, to playful chants from the audience of ‘down in one, down in one….’.
They finish their set with a cheerful nod to country favourites The Dixie Chicks, and by 10pm the girls are done, early for a Friday night I know, but Gorilla use the venue as a club on a Friday, so for future reference remember to turn up early or you will miss the support act.
