And so the streak continues, I went to see Mumford and Sons play at the ICA. Alessi’s ark also supported and I was dead excited to see her play again.
I originally wasn’t going mainly due to the tickets selling out pretty quickly. Fortunately I posted on the last.fm event page saying I was in need of a ticket and boom, was offered to buy one from a kind last.fm’er. I arrived pretty much on time and got my ticket for the gig, smooth transaction 
During the queue I met up with Chalky and Anika. No surprises here, we see each other far too often. We discussed more about cult side characters during our gigging adventures and also bits and bobs about the bands we were about to see. I had Emmeee out for a bit to check wheether there were tickets for Final Fantasy playing in union chapel, alas it’s not on sale….yet.
The first band, Sons of Noel and Adrian, were really good. Anika pointed out that one of the guys was from The Leisure Society, I took a thorough scan and noticed that a whole bunch of them were from Leisure Society, a small small world. The music was nice and full on (10 band members in total, instruments range from double bass, banjo, violin and some brass on the side) and I really enjoyed it.
Next up were Alessi, we manageed to catch her before the gig but didn’t actually come to say hi. She wore a velvet dress and as soon as she stood next to the mic did I realise that man, she’s pretty tall :O! I only saw her play by herself at Bandstand Busking so it was a real treat to see her play with her band this time. I really love her voice, though at times I wished there were more solo spots with her playing by herself since the backing band do drown out her beautiful voice, filled with cheeky vibratos rolling off the end of her words. She was friendly on stage and bantered quite a bit with quirky musings and song explanations.
Here’s a video of her playing Memory Box
Next up were Mumford & Sons (damnit I keep making typos and writing “songs” instead of “sons”). I love all the harmonies during most of the songs. Their drums consist of a bass drum and tambourine but once it kicks in things get pretty epic. They played Sigh No More, Little Lion Man, Awake My Soul, White Blank Page, Feel the Tide, Hold On, Timeshel (new song), I gave you all, Roll Away Your Stone, But my Heart and The Cave
Here’s a video of them doing Roll Your Stone Away
They came back for an encore where Marcus (the singer) had a full on drum kit and played Dust Bowl Dance. That was probably the best song on the set, nice and full
