The title of this post is aptly taken from a song on The Civil Wars free downloadable album 'Live At Eddie's Attic' because this is exactly what they have been ever since I saw them do a cover of Billie Jean and then play their own song Barton Hollow on Later with Jools Holland.
Having been listening to the Live album and the Barton Hollow studio album continuously since I loaded them on to my iphone I can safely say I was really looking forward to this concert. So after proudly listening to my daughter do her grade 1 clarinet exam I headed over to Liverpool from Sandbach to pickup my partner in crime for the evening and we both headed over to Manchester in rush hour on a Friday. Somethings are worth it, we were certainly hoping so anyway. A few wrong turns in Manchester and we were safely parked up in the Academy car park. Ok time to get this party started, so we went for a coffee and a cake over the road(we're not as young as we used to be). As we chatted it was obvious we both had very high expectations for this gig, we'd both been watching different live performances on the web and all of them looked great. Could they live up to it? The more we talked the better it had to be.
So pumped full of coffee we headed out, we got to what only a month or so ago had been the entrance to The Academy 2 and it was boarded up. What to do? the signs only showed the way to the student union bar. There was a big queue heading into The Academy so we assumed there was some interlinking passageway that would get us back to where we wanted to be, we joined the queue. Looking around us we were surrounded by halflings or some sort of other youthful race that we didn't recognise(we've since been informed these were teenagers). A ticket tout seeing we were out of sorts kindly directed us to where we should be, which was not going to see Nero.
We made it in, first impressions of the venue were it's the school gym with the walls painted black... oh well. We arrived just in time to see the support band come on Matthew and The Atlas. Three unassuming people stood center stage and started playing. That's when the magic started, we were surrounded by people chatting and walking/pushing past to get to the bar but none of it mattered the periphery was hazing out. I was transfixed on the stage a lovely haunting sound created by a violin, guitar and banjo. Listening to them reminded me of the soundtrack to 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford' (I wish it would've reminded of a film with a shorter title like Tron or something but it didn't). They just drew me in with a really beautiful Americana feel which left me pretty surprised when I heard the fella speak and he was a Brit(Or certainly sounded like one from where I was stood, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong).
All too soon they were finished and we had a few minutes to say to each other 'They were pretty amazing' and the hum drum of people chatting and bar expeditions started to rematerialise.
Then it was time surely they wouldn't be as good as we'd built them up to be? They drifted on from behind a curtain and started. If Matthew and The Atlas started the spell The Civil Wars sublime sounds completed it, the surrounding noise and bar shuffling hazed out for a second time and I was mesmerised by the playful charisma of the two people center stage. Even in this venue you felt like you'd been invited into The Civil Wars front room so they can play their songs for you and have a light hearted chat. It seemed like they had an intimate connected to the audience vibe. I'm not sure how this would feel in some of the much bigger venues but I would love to see them somewhere like The Lowry in Manchester. At times they had people singing, dancing, swaying(that could have been drink though) and then as the last tones of Dance Me Too The End of Love died away reality snapped back into focus but I felt warmer and happier than I had when I first walked into that dark cold looking hall.
So was it as good as I had imagined......well I have a pretty good imagination but nothing could have prepared me for how good they were.
Luckily we're going back to see them in Liverpool on 1st November just to prove it wasn't a fluke on their part ;-)
Don't take my word for it check out their free downloadable live album 'Live at Eddie's Attic'
http://www.thecivilwars.com/
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