Folk rock with a contemporary slant: Alasdair Roberts’s Pangs tour calls into Plymouth

Scottish folk artist Alasdair Roberts, will be returning to The B-Bar with his trio, featuring Alex Neilson (drums) and Stevie Jones (bass), to celebrate the release of his new album, Pangs.

The high-spirited Pangs, is accompanied by the newly-minted video for the title track.

Throughout Pangs, Alasdair’s leads a band on electric guitar, offering an evocation of the 60s and 70s folk-rockers of the British Isles – the electric warriors of Fairport Convention, the Battlefield Band, Planxty, Richard Thompson and so many others, says the blurb.

Of course, these sounds travel through the music of Alasdair, which is set very firmly in the world of today.

And even a dark lament can lift the heart – the point in fact is Pangs itself, a skipping ode considering the phenomenon of “sympathetic birth” – where the pain of the expecting mother is shared by another. We take this to be Alasdair’s observation of the Brexit/Trump echo, a collapse that has been heard across nations.

It makes sense then that the Pangs video finds Alasdair hitching a ride through hostile counties, standing on the rock of Hadrian’s Walk (the ancient Roman wall built in the north of England to mark the boundary of their empire) and returning, prodigal-son style to a remote castle where children play and a preacher leads his flock.

There’s magic involved, via a selenite Crystal Wand, and an evocation of end times. A stark but compelling vision that reminds us to consider others as we do ourselves. With a guitar solo too! Watch it now!

Alasdair’s UK tour (with Alex Neilson and Stevie Jones) brings the trio to the B-Bar to perform in the gorgeous setting of the Barbican Theatre.

Watch the Alasdair Roberts Trio at the Barbican Theatre, Plymouth on Saturday 18th March 2017. Click here.

@AliRobertsMusic
https://www.facebook.com/alasdairrobertsmusic/

@BBarPlymouth

(from a press release)

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