Breathing Space, Mansfield, 27-Jun-09
Olivia Sparnenn
On Saturday June 27, Breathing Space returned to The Intake Club in Mansfield, their third gig since Liam Davidson replaced Mark Rowen on guitar.
Although the gig was advertised as an 8pm start, thanks to a long tailback on the M1 delaying one member of the band it was almost ten before Breathing Space finally hit the stage.
Liam Davidson
Changing just one band member has transformed the band’s sound far more that I’d expected. Mark Rowen’s economical jazz-tinged playing was a major element of Breathing Space’s sound, and Liam has a very different style. With Mostly Autumn he’s always very much in the background, but I’ve always thought he’s a far better guitarist than many people realise. Given the chance in the spotlight shows just how good he can playing lead. He doesn’t try to copy Mark’s solos note-for-note, instead using the basic structure as a template for solos of his own.
The result is a far rawer and rockier band. Many of the big soaring ballads and jazz-rock jams that epitomised “Coming Up for Air” have been retired from the set in favour of guitar-driven hard rock numbers, turning the overall energy level of the set up several notches. A surprise was the Mostly Autumn standard “Never the Rainbow”, which I’d not heard Breathing Space play live before.
The set included several new songs from the forthcoming album “Below the Radar”. The title track has been in the setlist for a while, but the standout of the new numbers has to be the encore, “Questioning Eyes”, a huge soaring epic in the same league as Iain’s “The Gap Is Too Wide” or “Carpe Diem”.
June 30th, 2009 at 9:20 pm
I hate when shows start late. The Jonas Brothers concert last night started late. By like an hour and a quarter. Which is probably harder on pre-teens than two hours is on grown ups.
June 30th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
It’s even worse if you’d been planning to get home by the last train or bus - that’s when I appreciate venues with strict curfews. The downside is that if there’s some unavoidable delay at the start they have to cut the show short. But those shows almost always start on time, so it doesn’t arise.
Pure Reason Revolution in Manchester ran really late in spite of the advertised times, I had to get an expensive taxi home rather than the last train, and a friend missed most of their set in order to catch the train (he lives further out of town than me, and the taxi would have cost him a lot more).