billy nomates performing at leeds hyde park book corner

★★★★☆ (4/5)

**BILLY NOMATES PERFORMING AT LEEDS HYDE PARK BOOK CORNER**
**PHOTOCREDIT: BRETT FAWKES**

Billy Nomates brought their Undergrowth tour to Leeds on a Saturday night to the intimate venue of the Hyde Park Book Club. The tour itself had been billed as something different involving acoustic reworkings of older songs and some newer songs. It definitely classed as something different!

The support act, movement artist Stephanie McCann, actually started preforming before most of the crowd realised, she was there. Rhythmic music started and it slowly dawned on the crowd after a minute or two that someone up the back was dancing quite intensely to it. This was Stephanie, she danced through the crowd, getting very close to a number of us before making it to the stage only to come back down and join the crowd again. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it a gig!

If you know the venue you will know the artist has to come through the crowd to get to the stage. The band, because this time it was a band and not just Tor, appeared before nine. Tor is touring with a bassist and a drummer for the first time, and it made a huge difference.

Tor’s voice has always been outstanding but having the foil of the other two playing and singing took this show to a whole new level. It was both intimate and somehow expansive with plenty of banter between the band.

They played a mix of new songs, including one that will be on the new album to be released in May of next year and some old favourites. There were reworkings and rearrangements. There was, however, only one Acoustic song, but as Tor explained, titling the show something a bit different, didn’t look good on the poster.

You could tell the whole band were revelling in the intimacy of the venue, explaining they’d never got to play these smaller venues before, more than once there was reference to being able to see the whites of our eyes.

The whole band came across as being funny, warm and engaging. Even going as far as to take in their stride the unfortunate situation which arose when they asked the crowd to name famous people from Leeds, at the very end someone shouted out Jimmy Saville, which caused a bit of a reaction (and also isn’t true). Tor then had to tell us that the next song on the setlist, purely be chance, was about a little boy, you honestly couldn’t make it up!

Spice and Balance Is Gone caused outbreaks of dancing in the crowd but there wasn’t a weak link or song that didn’t get a joyous reaction. Everything was brilliantly sung and played, and the disappointment was palatable when Tor announced their last song with multiple requests for them to keep playing.

This was, without a doubt, the best gig I’ve seen this year. Made even better by getting to chat to the band when they came to the merchandise show to sell some of the t-shirts the bassist had been plugging throughout!