Eb & Sparrow – The Wine Cellar (Concert Review)

It’s a dark and stormy night, and the line of people queuing for tickets winds right through the labyrinth that is the Wine Cellar.

Inside, Port Chalmers resident and APRA Silver Scroll nominee Nadia Reid, transports the crowd with her hypnotic folk songs. The last song, the newest, is also the muscliest. In it, she tells the tale of how she lost herself in Te Aro.

Five-piece Wellington band Eb and Sparrow, “a country band with indie aspirations”, take the flower-bedecked stage and play two deliciously dreamy sets.

Eb and Sparrow is one of those bands that’s made up of serious musicians. That is to say, the musicians themselves don’t seem particularly serious, but boy can they play. Bryn Heveldt makes his lapsteel wail, the debonair Nick Brown switches between slinky brushes and sassy sticks, Jason Johnson plays the heart out of his guitar and Chris Winter knows his way around a bass, a selection of brass instruments and a tambourine that he shakes like a rattlesnake.

But the most powerful instrument in the band is singer Ebony Lamb’s voice. It’s difficult to explain a voice, so you can take your pick between these similes:

• Like liquid nitrogen on a Masterchef dessert.
• Like an ice sculpture of a swan melting slowly in the midday heat.
• Like the last stick of sweet cotton candy as the sun sets over the fairground.

The other band members back Ebony up with luscious vocal harmonies. The five-piece have fantastic stage presence, and the evening is like a variety show with the range of slow-dance inspiring torch songs, pop-rock toe-tappers and stand-up comedy on offer.

The two sets include spellbinding original numbers, along with original takes on classics such as Roy Orbison’s Only the Lonely and Neil Young’s Are You Ready for the Country. At the end of the second set the audience members clap until it seems they might riot for more songs, so the band negotiates terms for an encore. They agree to perform two more numbers, and finish the evening on a gentle, wistful note with their song Little Hands.

The amplifiers are turned off, a crowd gathers around the merchandise table, and then people disperse slowly back out into the rain.

Kathryn van Beek

www.kathrynvanbeek.co.nz

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Tour information

If you missed out on Eb and Sparrow last night you can catch them tonight at Leigh Sawmill, or at a number of spots around the country as they complete theirtour.

Click on any image to view a photo gallery by Tim Armstrong: