Toronto – British folk music is starting to take over. With the surging popularity of acts like Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons, its only fitting we see more and more bands from this genre. Enter Stornaway, a four piece folk act from england with an occasional strings and horn section. They were in town on Thursday to promote their new album Beachcomber’s Windowsill, which featured the hit single Zorbing.
The set started off with a violin solo by violinist Rahul Satija. The rest of the band took the stage shortly. The 4 piece band featured Brian Briggs on vocals, Rob Steadman on Drums and Jon Ouin and Oli Steadman on various instruments. The latter two’s usage of synths, banjos and various string instruments had me actually doubting my labeling of them as a folk band as they showed a lot more depth and layered with their sounds. Still, the band played a solid set of cleverly written songs that made you feel like you were in a tavern, in some village on a rolling hill somewhere in Britain. The English dominate crowd seemed to appreciate all the references to the old country. The band seemed genuinely pleased to be playing to such a large crowd after having played Columbus the previous night.
What really set the show apart was the encore. With the crowd already in the palm of his hands following the 1-2 set ending punch featuring the previously mentioned Zorbing , lead singer Brian Briggs took the stage for the encore and asked the crowd if he could play unplugged. Bringing back the string section, Stornoway played an incredible version of The End of the Movie. The unplugged guitars coupled with a string secton made the song sound absolutely incredible. It was so good that the couple standing beside us finally shut up and stopped talking during the song. An equally strong acappella version of We Are the Battery Human capped off what turned out to be a spectacular show.
