Band of Horses at Shepherd Bush Empire

Oh I have been waiting for this! First picked up on BoH via podacst on KEXP (not surprisingly given their prior residence in Seattle) where there are a number of podcasts with BoH content. I am now rather hooked, along with others of their ilke (inlcuding the wonderful Mr Tyler Ramsey guitarist of this parish)

Well the lad and I schlepped (sp?) up the M4 to London and the splendid Shepherd Bush Empire for the first of their two sold out nights - squeezed onto the first row of the balcony which was none to comfortable but got us fine views.

Support was from The Virgins (unlikey it seems to me , but there you are) a bunch of skinny chaps with a not unpleasant if not especially memorable bunch of songs (the lad thought them rather good, for the record)

Well the BoH set just blew me away - once Ben settled into his vocal the whole thing rocked along. How great to see a band obviously really enjoying themselves, the audience was absolutely up for it and the set flew by. The whole thing was brilliant, not too many stupid pyrotechnics just great music, ( including a wonderful version of No-One Goes Out Anymore from Mr Ramseys solo album) and Funeral might well have been the high spot for me. As I say they obviously had a ball and it was great to bring them back for a second unplanned encore before we all melted back into the night

Sometimes a gig seems to transcend the usual, this was one such occasion, the lad and I agreed that this was one of the top two or three gigs we have seen (and I even bought the right size T shirt for a change...)