The Staves - 7/11/2015

I was expecting to miss at least some of the support act but got there for the start and I'm glad I did. He was Gabrielle Rios from New York and he kicked off with a guitar and vocal solo version of 'Voodoo Chile' - ambitious but surprisingly good and different. That's almost two Hendrix covers in a row as Steve Earle sang 'hey Joe' very near the end of his gig. Then the other two band members came on (cello + double bass) and the half hour set went too quickly with some original songs, some spiky guitar playing and a good band sound all together. The Staves had a three-piece band behind them (as well as playing guitar and other stuff themselves) plus a three-piece brass and violin section so there were up to nine musicians on stage for some songs. Early on they did a couple of songs from their recent album including the excellent and catchy 'Black and White'and they covered pretty much all of that album with the rest other songs of theirs and just one cover 'Feel' from Bombay Bicycle Club. The thing with The Staves is that you have three voices in perfect harmony and that vocal sound is front and centre all the time despite the size of the band. It is a sound that is joy to listen to and they played on those harmonies with voice looping as well so at times there were five or more Staves voices in action. A highlight of their earlier stuff was the ethereal 'Mexico'. The two or three songs after that were also excellent and all in all the gig had a nice dynamic to it. They finished the encore with Teeth White' which was clearly the audience favourite after a new song whose name I forget. I am a sucker for the well-harmonized sound of female vocals and The Staves delivered.