Stornoway at Somerset House

From the reverential sing-along opening of Boats and Trains, to a foot-stomping Zorbing to close the set, Stornoway hold a capacity Somerset House crowd in the palms of their hands. In the third instalment of the venue’ s Summer Music Series, the band play all eleven songs off their album, Beachcomber’ s Windowsill, and throw in four others to give fans a flavour of what to expect on the second album.

This Oxford foursome (singer Brian Briggs, multi-instrumentalists Jon Ouin and Ollie Steadman, and drummer Rob Steadman) is of the genre-defying variety but they are commonly classified as folk: if that is the case, then these guys are making folk really, really cool. Think a mellower Mumford & Sons, a more upbeat Nick Drake. It is the lyrical storytelling and musicality that has earned Stornoway a loyal and growing following in the past year – they have a way of expressing the nuances in life that can be hard to articulate.

After their understated and fragile opener, Briggs announces they are ‘quite nervous, not just because we’re next-door to Inland Revenue’, before picking up the tempo with I Saw You Blink. Crowd favourites We Are the Battery Human, Fuel Up and Watching Birds go down a storm, and the less well-known The Bigger Picture (sung by Briggs as a solo) is an absolute delight – I for one hope that when they arrange the song as a band, they keep it as stripped-down as possible.

Briggs chats to the crowd between songs, at one point comparing a recent visit to the Eastleigh Strawberry Museum with the Burnt Food Museum in Massachusetts and later is unaffected by a technical hitch, confessing, ‘I am completely and solely guilty for that fuck-up. Shall we have that again?’ He draws laughs from the crowd but is clearly far more comfortable singing than talking. It only adds to the charm.

My initial scepticism at having the four-piece beefed-up dissipates within minutes, the North Sea Radio Orchestra turn out to be a welcome addition to the second half of the set, and add depth without being overpowering – The End of the Movie is goosebump-inducing, and when they round up with Zorbing, the crowd erupts into a full-on hoedown (fuelled by the trumpet-violin duo of Adam Briggs and Rahul Satija). All grinning ear-to-ear, Brian thanks the crowd, exclaiming, ‘we like making music and we like playing to you!’ before exiting the stage.

After the gig, Ouin says that the second album is ‘going really well’ and that fans can expect a release sometime in spring next year. How would he describe the sound? He thinks for a while. ‘Pensive, positive and personal. The three P’ s.’ If new songs Farewell Appalachia!, When You Touch Down From Outer Space and Ones We Hurt the Most are anything to go by, the album will be worth the wait.

The Somerset House Summer Series with American Express continues to run until Sunday, July 17 at:

Somerset House Trust
The Strand
Covent Garden
WC2R 1LA

For more information about Stornoway, visit their official website.