My Review: The Slow Readers Club with Joe Duddell & No. 7 Ensemble - Live at Canvas Manchester / 1-12-2023

The Slow Readers Club with Joe Duddell & No. 7 Ensemble
Live at Canvas
Manchester

Can a bubble fill with deliberate, sudden emotions, and then also suspend your breath, wander off in wonder? If you attend the musical event of the year, certainly yes, and that is exactly what happened at the elegant Canvas in Manchester, where a generous miracle took place on stage: the union of different modes, roles and approaches to music, for a result that makes, this time, shock a multiple benefit. The hypnosis touched the shoulders of each of the participants, except for those few people who preferred to chat, paying for it, and even ended up disturbing Aaron. But it is undeniable that the result penetrated sensitive and attentive souls. The songs chosen by the fans and processed by Joe Duddell in a very short time altered the interpretation of the original ones: everything moved to another emotional and sensory plane, with the pleasant feeling of a nocturnal birth within the hearts. Wistfulness, melancholy, sadness, which are often the natural habitat of these compositions, took flight wrapped in a linen scarf, in order to arrive, unharmed, within the moonbeams.
Madness, trembling, tension but never a sense of loss governed the sixteen magic-filled streams to find themselves in a different entrance: an infinite catapult of thrills established that this experience could create with memory an infinite instrument full of strength and vitality. The changes, the retouches, the verve of a conductor truly capable of first intuiting and then bringing it all to an untouchable status makes this evening the representation of unions that are natural parts, and of which one can only hope for a continuous proliferation. The strings, as they did in 2017, push both towards the abdomen and the vault of heaven new consciousnesses, branching out into the paths of thoughts new shimmers. And one is fragile, shrouded in interpretative secrets that enhance individuality, while a few centimetres from one's own person others seem to be filled with similar tremors. On a small stage, eleven people had the ability to bring pop closer to classical music, to annul any distances to enhance the warmth, the colour of the notes and tune the passion within a densely visited circuit, and not by chance. Aaron's voice, much more attentive than last week's, scratched, made tumult known, splitting veins and vertebrae thanks to a deadly intensity: as if he had crouched down in his own intimacy and decided to let it drop into the microphone. Tuned to the gravelly tones of seven musicians perennially in a state of grace, seriousness, and even responsibility, the frontman slid his uvula across the carpet of vibrations so strung together that there was a single lump in his throat for the duration of the concert.

The release to weeping, to yearning was simply impressive and devastating: all the words that we already knew by heart, and that perhaps we had the presumption of having understood, this evening were able to teach us new elements, knocking us to the ground, into chaos, into joy, into the embrace between the black and white of a starry sky inside the Canvas. The drumming this evening, thanks to long pauses, was remarkably effective, perfect, even enhancing the bass, for an ensemble that made the interpretation illuminating: it was like this for every song played together. Then, all of a sudden, Aaron was alone with the ensemble, and it was like taking a warm punch in the chill of the Mancunian night. The slow, dense, phosphorescent energy came out of the amplifiers to kiss our inertia, our stillness, to produce a different crash in our perceptions. The chains, those mentioned in Know The Day Will Come, have fallen on our skin, like a generous liberating act: sometimes in contradictions pacts of infinite wisdom are established... In the new prison, the wings of coveted freedom found themselves resized, teaching, releasing enthusiasm as tears wet the floor. Four of the six songs, which had been released six years ago, after the first contact between the band and the ensemble, were re-proposed but also modified, caressed and kissed by a new idea, through an expressive 'liveliness' that gave them even more of an impression of extended drama.
The lights conveyed the rare ability to connect with the notes: a fact that impressed the Old Scribe, who did not give up closing his eyes to fly, with precision, into a state of absorption that was more necessary than ever. Time seemed like a speleologist launched into the crater of the pieces to bring out fragments of continuous wonder, with amazement running through his veins with no will to stop. The audience, enthusiastic and inebriated, was once again able to legitimise their love and bring it into the space of a memory where they can knock often: evenings like these don't happen often. An experience that also highlights the Manchester band's confidence in letting someone, externally, put a lamp in the belly of these jewels: if perfection exists, it should be sought in others and the four have amply demonstrated this. Struggle, self-denial, the limit and its opposite have established a rain of tears and reflections that have generated paralysis and at the same time a 'strange' joy: words like messages frankly glued to notes that have changed clothes have managed to open wide the range of our antennae, giving us the map of new truths. There was no shortage of smiles: during the performance of Grace of God Aaron fell into hesitation, with the support of the adoring audience, ending in a rhythmic applause that conveyed an incandescent emotion: where there is error, there is also support...

Everything I Own, Sacred Song, Grace of God, Afterlife and All the Idols were the most spectacular moments of the evening, with Block Out The Sun watching from above. But undeniable was the quality of the entire concert, a dense and generous heap that spanned the discography, bringing out even more of its beauty, its strength, its intensity to make precise the sense of devoted belonging to the band. Joe's work is worthy of a Nobel Prize for emotional literature, for handing Aaron the sceptre of an unbridled but respectful angel, and for allowing his boys to leave an incredible tattoo depicting art at its highest level on that stage: history has a date, a direction and an enchantment that will forever make those chains free to be felt as the wings of our best dreams...

Alex Dematteis
Musicshockworld
Salford, England
2 December 2023