THE LITTLE UNSAID – A one-off intimate solo show from band frontman John Patrick Elliott
‘Bold and different…Joni Mitchell, Roy Harper, a touch of Radiohead….stretches boundaries.’ The Guardian
‘Stunning…if Nick Cave were a small man from Yorkshire and sang his anxiety dreams in falsetto, it would sound something like this.’ The Line of Best Fit
The Little Unsaid’s most recent album sees the ever-mutating songwriting project of Yorkshire-born musician/ producer John Elliott enter its thirteenth year of incredible artistic consistency, still finding efficacy in the scraps of inspiration salvaged from personal and political turmoil. Lyrics cut like sunbeams through his own Mariana Trench, delivered with the glint of a small smile that drags the dregs of humour from depression, finds rhythm in a slow dance with paralysis and courts a genuine contentment from the talons of an overwhelming world.
The Little Unsaid’s songs sound excavated, and their playing them is to chisel away at the earth around the artefact. Hooks linger like long lost folk standards; poetic monologues fly a few muddled lines away from scatting; the band’s transitions from quiet to loud carry the theatricality of art rock. It makes sense that you can read Elliott’s lyrics in a book, and makes sense too that you can hear his music in the West End.
The Little Unsaid’s forays into electronic music have always championed melody above all; you’d wager that this is what Radiohead would sound like had Thom Yorke listened to Richard Thompson instead of Scott Walker. It’s a sound that has gathered a fervent cult following over the years, too, from early records mixed by Ride’s Mark Gardener and Jonny Greenwood’s solo producer Graeme Stewart, to headline tours and festival performances across Europe, eventually signing with Reveal Records in 2018 – the team behind Joan As Policewoman and Lau – to release a career-spanning Best Of.
Fable, the band’s most recent studio album, is fitting to the ideology of music they’ve nurtured through the years, toing and froing between a sublime romanticism and bruised tenderness that revels in the punch-up. “I think the songs unavoidably reflect the chaos and simmering collective anxiety that’s everywhere around us,” says Elliott, “but they’re also held together by this palpable sense of gratitude and joy. There’s a defiance in that, and a sense of hope, I think, that hopefully finds a few sparks of meaning in all the madness.”
★★★★★ ‘Mesmeric. Atmospheric. Totally beguiling.’ RnR (R2) Magazine
‘A beautiful, bleak, progressive, symphonic, poetic, technically clever and at times heartbreaking masterpiece.’ FATEA
Doors open 7pm, Music starts 8.30pm. The venue is mixed seated and standing. Tables are limited, and available on a first come first served basis, so if you’d like a seat, we recommend arriving early!
