LIVE REVIEWS

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Sandman Magazine

HiFi Club, Leeds, 14th May 2008:

Benjamin Wetherill opens tonight with electric folk which veers off on several wailing, noisy tangents, all held together by his fragile vocals. In spite of his chosen style demanding an acoustic approach, the twang of his cheap electric guitar, the insane saxophone improvisations and the often sporadic drumming all breathed a somewhat sinister life into his fantastic songs. This is folk music relevant to such an urban context...

Michael Waters

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www.whisperinandhollerin.com

The Library, Leeds, 21st June 2008:

Opening the night's proceedings was THE BENJAMIN WETHERILL BAND. This fast-developing project has got me hooked. BENJAMIN WETHERILL himself produces his characteristically mannered songs, from English Tradition and from his own composition, sung in a slightly wavering tenor voice. So far so folk. But he has a blues-based drummer in Alastair Neilson, a free jazz/improv saxophonist in Karl D'Silva, a vocalist and Echopet manipulator in Laura Parsons and (for tonight) local impresario and general good egg James Brown on bass.

The end result is nothing like folk and a great deal like something arresting and rather marvelous in its own right. Songs like "The Cruel Sea Captain" and the magnificent "Lowlands" show up, but they come out as natural parts of something much more edgy, spontaneous and unpredictable. The creative excitement is palpable. The only comparison that makes sense to me is with the feeling I had when seeing DAVID THOMAS BROUGHTON when he started to develop his unique approach to (again) a kind of folk music that no one would recognise as folk music. I just hope that this material leads to a recording.

Sam Saunders

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www.glasswerk.co.uk-

The Luminaire, London, 5th Sept 2007

... Benjamin Wetherill plays the most fragile, "wouldn't hurt a fly" music, but melds it expertly with bleak storytelling. The Leeds-based singer-songwriter enraptures the audience, many of whom sit cross legged on the floor. The scene seems oddly reminiscent of "storytime" at kindergarten. The crowd are transfixed... you can literally hear a pin drop. Late arrivals tiptoe across the wooden floor so as not to disturb the scene... even the bar staff seem aware that they should not ruin the atmosphere, and take extra care to close the cash register quietly. Wetherill finds time to pull out a ukulele, for a cover of George Formby's 'Noughts & Crosses', and he finishes with another cover, the 1930s music hall favourite 'Nobody Loves A Fairy When She's Forty'. It's a stunningly simple set from a man destined for much bigger and better things.

Ben Graham