Night on Earth, to EartH (Theatre)
- 42 minutes ago
- 5 min read
Words by August Janklow
Ninety years ago the Savoy Cinema opened on Kingsland Road.
Four years after that bombs fell over London.
Fifty-Three years after that a handful of filmmakers founded a charity.
A few Saturdays ago I was lucky enough to spend five hours listening to five acts, for a worthwhile cause,
in a beautiful room built for a very slightly different purpose.
Unrelated of course.
Bathtime Sounds helmed this halfday fundraiser for Warchild with a lineup of London’s best bands to
float away to,
in their words:
“All proceeds from the event will be donated to War Childs’s current efforts in Gaza and
Sudan, supporting not only children but also their families, helping entire communities heal,
rebuild, and create safer futures together.”
There was an ongoing raffle where you could win stuff like Tickets to Black Country, Mary in the Junkyard Merch Bundle, and Box of freshly made pasta. I really wanted that one.
It was a loose and wiry March the 28th, chilly with sold out butts on flat wooden “seats” and money going
to those who needed it.
It had a nice vibe.
I thought I had been to Earth before, but like the current owners before me who bought the place blind of
the upstairs, I hadn’t seen the theatre.
And walking into that Greek theatron, spotting the water stains and mock-metal stag embossments of the chicest room in Dalston, I was met with a harp and a white gown.
Aga Ujma is a couple parts Bjork, a couple parts Andy Samberg’s wife (look it up)*, and a million other A-to-A comparisons I’m sure she’s heard a thousand times. Mostly she was her, and her is one person’s warm, absolute command of an outsized stage. She’s been at it for years and you can tell in the deftness. A voice for bouncing off hills and valleys paired with an instrument we don’t usually get to see here in our world of Rock band with Violin and Punk band with Sax.
I intend this to be a portrait of London in the 2020s.
But her voicings summon up some kind of something.
If you can truly perform Folk music that feels as if it blooms from the Folk, from the dirt, from your eyes looking up at the stars, The Earth. That’s a gift. And if you’re that finely tuned to your instrument, it’s like one beast galloping on.
Nice lyricism, especially the Polish.
I assume.
Over the break I bought two raffle tickets.
Skydaddy gave the gift of Parisien Lullaby Jazz. I’ve heard he iterates differently each time, well on Saturday he sounded like a singer songwriter thrown the keys to the orchestra pit. I weirdly got a kind of Sean Lennon Dead Meat vibe at times, it could have been from the sort of beautiful circus music cyclical horn/wind section thing. I think there was a bass clarinet? Or baritone somethingorother. Really lovely arrangements of compelling tracks.
The smell of Turkish restaurants wafts in on trills and sax arpeggios (y’see there was no reentry and I had been there for some hours now. But in lieu of food I ate non-alcoholic beer and the magic of song). The things that bind us all.
Skydaddy is what you hear as you fall down a deep hole towards a portal to years gone by. Skydaddy made me want to tie balloons to a house to honour my dead wife. We’re either trouncing through a forest or flying high above, or in Paris.
Speaking of: one track has a very nice John Cale nod.
At times I felt like a debutant in a musical being spun around and shown the world. And of course Rachid deserves endless credit for bringing the event together.
The heads at EartH were all sorts as you’d expect.
Full credit where it’s due, my mother got into Ugly before I did. She is brunette and lives in Los Angeles. What’s to say about them? There’s six of them and they’re perfect. There’s a button living inside each of these people you see on stage that when pressed pushes out untouchable, uniform Steely Dan
harmonies. This was more electricky than I expected, that’s something to say.
They play like it’s the record (though I think most, if not all the songs were new).
I especially like that everyone attached to a keyboard paces around the stage in between necessary parts.
They look great in silhouette, I was at the top of the theatre and they looked like... bugs from up there. A steam engine whistling, “It’s time to go!”
I didn’t make it down to the Black Country DJ set, if that makes me a bad journalist then so be it.
I did manage to ask Clari from Mary in the junkyard a question. I had a couple prepared, things like:
“Can you believe dinosaurs were real?”;
“Do you think you’d still be you if you were born in a different time?”,
“Have you ever been to a junkyard?”
But I only managed one:
AUGUST JANKLOW (HIDEOUS): What bird would you be?
CLARI: . . . (after a couple moments’ quiet consideration): Sparrow.
If that makes me a bad journalist then so be it.
Blue Bendy were bloody exciting mate, innit. Like the prettiest football stadium chant. Scunthorpe’s own danced across our visions as an eye floater does some 1000 times a day. Perhaps my well-visioned friends would like a more relatable metaphor, well they already get the world.
The word of the hour is anthemic. Arthur is obviously very charismatic and knows how to work a crowd, after some howls and pacing and convulsion and wails and barks and squeals and aching melodic cries he stops and says:
“Thank you, I’m sorry.”
before the band comes charging back in on some instrumental that’s as familiar to James Murphy as it
would be to King Henry.
It’s cold at EartH.
I feel like if I gush anymore about Mary in the Junkyard on company time I’m libel to be throttled. Go fucking see them. Too far? Grow some wings and learn to fly. They live in your phone for fucksake! And they’re as good live. Bringing in equal parts new and old compositions it was a nice teaser of the record to come (Role Model Hermit, July 3rd by the way). The harmonium’d new single Crash Landing landed crashingly. Coconut shaker in hand the trio never fails to woo you into a song worth hearing. I’d look out for Mouse on the record when it comes, if it’s anything like it is live (and I know it will be) we’ll all have a new song to cry too. I think Rosyln needs a break.
Keep an eye out for Warchild events in the near future. They seem to (for better or worse) really be having a moment right now, and I hope they continue to work with interesting curators and dash their stamp on good music. And of course, support the shit out of them.
One guy bought twenty tickets and won four prizes in the raffle, I didn’t get my pasta, money well spent.
*I know right? Crazy.
Donate to WarChild Here
Keep Up To Date With The Artists
Comments