King Heron
Thursday 28th November 2024 – Marrs Bar, Worcester
Thursday saw Bristol based guitar trio King Heron make their Worcester debut at The Marr’s Bar for Music Spoken Here.
We were eased into the first set with the floating ‘Dream Another’, a tune by the Chicago based drummer Makaya McCraven, from his 2022 album ‘In These Times’. Cameron Macdougall kicked proceedings off with a laid-back beat, with Cerith Evans adding a simple groove on his five-string bass before Jacob Houghton added the bright, dreamy guitar melody. This segued into ‘Hypnagogia’, a syncopated shuffle and jaunty bass groove interwoven by Jacob’s tuneful guitar, taken from the band’s first EP ‘Troika’, released in 2022 and named after the first iteration of this trio.
The John Scofield influence on the band and Jacob’s sound comes through on a few of their compositions, and the next, funkier tune was one of his – ‘A Go Go’, the title track of his 1998 album. Things stepped up a bit with the rockier ‘Chutzpah’, another track from their ‘Troika’ EP, a multi-part composition that gave Cameron an opportunity to open up on the kit. That segued into their third cover of the set, ‘Moment Us’, a dreamy, cinematic soundscape by Stuart McCallum from his 2006 album ‘Echo Architect’.
The first set closed with their two 2023 singles, ‘Stasis’ (the recorded version of which featured fellow Bristolian Andrew Neil Hayes on saxophone) and ‘Dew Drops’ – a piece that had featured in Music Spoken Here’s promotion of this gig.
The trio’s latest EP ‘Risky Business’ was released in September and they played the entire EP in sequence for the second set. Of particular note were ‘Oobleck’, a raucously fun adventure with shifting tempos and all, exhibiting something of a Louis Cole vibe, and the title track ’Risky Business’ – another demonstration of this trio’s propensity for tricky rhythmic dalliances. The set closed with their first ever recording ‘Acrobat’.
The attentive Marr’s Bar audience showed their appreciation and the band returned for an awesome encore of John Scofield’s ‘Thikhathali’ ending the evening with a delightful high-life vibe!
King Heron are a tight and imaginative trio that is very much a guitar-led unit of accomplished musicians who favour ensemble playing over frequent solos often played out in this field. The Scofield influence is apparent and it’s great to find young bands that are taking this music forward with their own contemporary experiences and ideas. I particularly liked the rhythmic intricacies of their music and there is certainly a solid connection between the guys, noticeably observing and responding to each other throughout the performance. The addition of saxophone on the Stasis recorded single demonstrated that there is room for the occasional extra element to their music that might be considered for future live performances, but this does not detract from this thoroughly enjoyable performance. It also introduced me to the music of Makaya McCraven and Stuart McCallum – always a bonus!
Review by Dave Fuller, Music Spoken Here