Sacred Paws brought smiles, sunshine, dancing and pure joy to Edinburgh’s Summerhall. The duo, comprising Rachel Aggs and Eilidh Rodgers, won the 2017 Scottish Album of the Year Award with their debut Strike A Match and their second album Run Around the Sun was long-listed in 2020. Both released on Rock Action Records.
With their combination of jit-jive inspired guitar and glorious vocal arrangements, this is music to dance to. Full stop. As drummer Eilidh said during the gig, “we keep adding songs to our set but still can only ever play about 50minutes, we just get faster!” There were no complaints from this Edinburgh crowd who showed their appreciation throughout. The dancing, whooping and cheering only increased as the gig progressed.
They opened with ‘The Conversation‘ from their second album. It utterly encapsulates Sacred Paws sound. Can sunshine be captured in music? This band certainly get incredibly close.
The last time Sacred Paws played Summerhall was a year almost to the day, an outdoor sit down gig! Remember those days? It’s impossible not to dance to this band, and chair-dancing must have been pure torture. This set included a sprinkling of songs from both albums: ‘Shame On Me’, ‘Nothing’ ‘Wet Graffiti’, ‘How Far’, ‘Life’s Too Short’ – the latter interrupted with a technical problem for the bassist Suze Bear who was one of the hardest working artists of the night having also played with support band Poster Paints. Ironically ‘Life’s Too Short’ came to a stuttering end but such is the atmosphere onstage that lovely banter and chat simply led to complete support from the crowd. All problems were resolved quickly and the song was restarted to more whoops.
One of the highlights of the night has to be Sacred Paws version of a clapping song ‘Everyday’. Their guitarist showed how it was done, and everyone was delighted all over again. This was the title track from their debut album and is the perfect place to start to explore this band. Anyone who caught Rachel and Eilidh’s slot on a BBC Radio6Music recently will know the chemistry between the duo. Their obvious joy onstage is translated into their chat and performance. All too soon the gig came to an end, but he’s a first, one of the stewards coming onstage to encourage the crowd to continue shouting for more! The band came back on and we got a second stab at the clapping song.
If you need more sunshine and dancing in your music, go listen to Sacred Paws.
Fore more information on Sacred Paws please check out their facebook and instagram.
