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Eyre Llew

Sep 20, 2024 By Dom Gourlay Photography by Nigel King Web Exclusive

If Covid-19 was the great leveller some commentators have made it out to be, it also had a detrimental effect on many careers. At the time the pandemic landed in March 2020, Nottingham experimental outfit Eyre Llew were riding the crest of a wave. Having just played two shows at the previous year’s Glastonbury Festival as well as successful tours around mainland Europe and South East Asia, all off the back of their critically acclaimed debut long player Atelo. It seemed like the band’s ascension to the next level of music’s stepladder was all but assured until the pandemic stopped them in their tracks.

What it did allow them to do was reassess how they saw themselves as a band as well as write and demo a bunch of new recordings. So, the then-three piece - Sam Heaton (guitar, vocals), Jack Bennett (guitars) and Jack Gibson (drums, piano) recruited two new members to the fold in Laurie Illingworth (piano, drums) and Russ Clark (bass) and in doing so, not only freed up the core members to focus on their own specialist areas of instrumentation but also add more depth to Eyre Llew’s songwriting process and live performances. What that also did was allow them the time and space to record a second album that’s representative of where Eyre Llew are today while debuting some of those compositions in front of a live audience.

Up to this point, shows have been very few and far between. Eyre Llew hadn’t played in their home city since 2019 so its quite telling that tonight’s gig represents their fourth Nottingham show in as many months, having made a grand comeback over the Easter weekend for what was a fundraiser towards the recording and mastering costs of the aforementioned second album. With appetites whetted for both band and fans alike, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that tonight’s show to commemorate Eyre Llew’s 10th anniversary as a band is all but sold out.

What’s also apparent- particularly for those of us who’ve witnessed their comeback shows - is how quickly those new songs have emerged as live favourites despite none having been released thus far. Of the nine songs played this evening, five are previously unreleased and set to appear on the band’s eagerly anticipated next record. Opener “Nova”, a staple of the band’s live sets pre-Covid is a brooding instrumental that takes on various shapes and patterns, while the pensive “Everywhere” continues the band’s journey into more textured territories. Better still and an undoubted highlight from this and all their most recent live shows is “Oban”, a song written by vocalist/guitar player Sam Heaton during a break in one of Scotland’s most remote parts. With its traditional verse-chorus lineage, it arguably represents Eyre Llew’s most straightforward pop song to date, if there ever were such a thing.

Of the other two new songs aired this evening, “Miningsby” and “Rainbow Bridge” could be described as standard Eyre Llew in the sense that neither would sound out of place on their debut. But at the same time, given the added dimension messrs Illingworth and Clark bring to the band, both songs are blessed with a new - and at times raging - dynamic that sets them apart from the band’s earlier works.

The more familiar likes of “Havoc” and “Atelo” from 2017’s debut are received with rapturous applause, as is “Silo”, a song written with South Korean post-rock outfit In the Endless Zanhyang We Are for 2019’s Carrier EP. A triumphant rendition of regular closer “Edca” brings the show to a celebratory climax, and with the new record hopefully set to land in the early part of next year 2025 looks set to be a pivotal twelve months for Eyre Llew.