Event – Nunnery Norheim ‘I Saw The City’ album launch
Support – Sara Wolff
Date – 16th September 2023
Venue – Music Room, Liverpool Philharmonic Hall
Reviewer – Alan O’Hare
A great singing voice can stop the clocks – but it’s only those singing with an aim that’s true who can truly make time stand still. When said voice is singing timeless songs, delivered both in colour and black and white simultaneously, then something special can occur. Nunnery Norheim found the sweet spots last Saturday night in Liverpool at the launch of their third album I Saw The City. It remains a shame they don’t come together more often to record and play live, but these precise polymaths have a lot on their plate.
So it was that a sold-out crowd gathered on a busy night for the city’s culture vultures (the Bunnymen were by the river with the Phil’s strings at the arena, Boys From The Blackstuff was down the hill at the Royal Court and Professor Yaffle were bashing away in an adjacent brewery) to bare witness to the live debut of a new project from town’s favourite alt-folk duo. Alt-folk? Yes, go on, we’ll go with that.
Lizzie Nunnery is a folk singer and the sounds Nunnery Norheim smother their songs in are full of left turns, detours and scenic routes. They never take the last bus home, preferring meandering melodies to take the tunes on a wild walk through urban landscapes. Delicate acoustic guitar runs, rippling piano notes, understated horns and strident strings create a soundscape that is complemented beautifully by Vidar Norheim’s wonderful percussive choices, as the drummer uses brushes, rods and bows to create notes instead of beats. Every sound made onstage is in service of the song and the tunes live or die on the intensity of the live performance of each musician in the six-piece band.
The Wilds, Moving To The Sticks and the prescient title track of the new album all brought the house down, while older songs found a new home inside the mini symphonies of the tone poem soundtrack turning pages in real time in front of the hushed crowd. It wasn’t a quiet night, however, the audience came to life at the end of each number to show their appreciation and Nunnery kept us all entertained while tuning with sweet talk, shout-outs and surreal Scouse observations.
The applause got louder as an encore arrived in the shape of the quietly devastating England Loves A Poor Boy (The Ballad Of Ernest Marke) and we all went home happy… but not in a straight line.
Review © 2023 Alan O’Hare
Nunnery Norheim’s ‘I Saw The City’ is out now and available from Bandcamp.
