Orlando Weeks’ new album Loja brings the former Maccabees frontman out on the road again, and he treats the crowd in Leeds’ Brudenell Social Club to an intimate evening of chilled out musical mastery.
Very low key, Weeks and his band emerge almost bashfully on to the cosy stage, ensconced in the corner of Brudenell’s Main Room, and he settles in behind the keyboard to kick things off with Sorry, taken from the new record. It’s a very intimate, personal set from Weeks. Eyes shut throughout each song, it was like he was lost in his own world, and we were peering through the curtains to watch from the outside.
Milkbreath is a soothing lullaby of a song, and Weeks tells us that it works better with white noise in the background. He leads the audience, as one, in a humming and shushing chorus which fizzes along in the background of this beautiful track. Really quite an experience and I don’t think I’ve heard anything quite like it at a show before.
The inter-song chat is a little hit and miss throughout, although this is also by Weeks’ own admission. He promises us with self-deprecating humour that, earlier in the tour, he’d completely nailed it, so we should keep our wits about us in case he regains that level of confidence in his chatter.
It’s a forgiving crowd though and they delight in a story of the bleakness of Travelodges, their “sleep dungeons” and the fact that the artwork looks like that from Weeks’ Hop Up record. He’s not wrong, and honestly, it’s possibly one of the most elegant segues into a plug of the merch stand that I’ve ever come across.
Toothpaste Kisses gets a very sweet reaction. An older song, a love song, you can see couples smiling warmly as it brings back a memory, or a feeling and they sink into each other’s arms.
The warmth and intimacy of the evening left people floating out of the Brudenell in a happy daze. Seeing a musician so enveloped in their craft is always a privilege and it suits this venue down to the ground. A beautifully chilled, high quality night of music.
