The Cedars at Bush Hall

Outside Bush Hall, it’s a dismal night.

The same buses are trawling back and forth along Uxbridge Road as another summer night succumbs to the all too familiar dim light and drizzling rain.

It’s another day where all the aggravations of living in London become impossible to ignore. It’s the rain together with the constant roadworks that are making the overloaded buses even more cumbersome to navigate.

So thank goodness then for what is going on in inside. Not only does the interior of the venue go some way by relieving the drabness of the day with hanging chandeliers and a plush red backdrop to the stage, but the bill features a collective of musicians and singers on a mission to bring some light heartedness to the evening. For tonight’s line-up features a quartet of bands serving up a welcome dose of Americana, which is a welcome distraction from what is unfortunately a quintessentially English summer day.

Each member of the quartet making up the roster of acts has their own individual take on the numerous styles that fall within the Americana genre. The Henry Brothers provide traditional vocal harmonies together with twanging guitars whilst Lana offer a more soulful take on the blues. The Green Rock River Band have a rollicking bluegrass set but it’s the headliners, The Cedars, who get the crowd fired up in anticipation of their arrival on stage.

Part of The Cedars’ appeal is that it is really quite impossible to define their sound. Their music, a mixture of blues, country and bluegrass, does not have any direct antecedent but would have the likes of Gillian Welch and Blind Willie McTell, amongst others, nodding along in approval.

The opener, Choke Chain, sets the tone for the night. A piercing and haunting lament about the travails of love and surviving heartbreak, the a cappella rendition allows singer Chantal to unleash her stunning voice on a captivated audience. It’s a voice marked with the dark nights of the soul that give a shuddering resonance to the song’s baleful lyrics.

The next three songs are much more upbeat in tempo and see the band as a taut and relentless unit. For anyone thinking that the blues or the country means plodding rhythms and lyrics about going down the fishing pool, it’s a heartfelt slap in the face.

At their best, The Cedars’ music is an urge to engage with the vicissitudes of life. Far from being the music of weary old men chewing tobacco on a porch, it’s the soundtrack to a person scrambling up to a bar and insisting that the assorted crowd hear his or her story about how they lost everything they had to a cold and unforgiving world. They reel off murder ballads and wail for a dead man walking. It’s pulsating yet also measured, mixing up jaunty ditties about writing letters to a lover along with their fierce, rollicking numbers that bring a previously sessile audience to its feet.

The group finish off with The Colour before being dragged backed by an enthralled crowd for one final number. Outside, it’s still as moribund as ever but the crowd that are coming out of the venue seem not to mind the damp drizzle, distracted as they are by whistling back the songs as they head home.

The Cedars played on August 11 at:

Bush Hall
310 Uxbridge Road
Shepherd’s Bush
W12 7LJ

www.thecedarsonline.com