Recorded at Belfast’s historic Elmwood Hall, as part of Quiet
Arch’s fourth birthday in December 2018, Live at Elmwood Hall is a release
that reveals the full spectrum of
Joshua Burnside's emphatic alt-folk craft. Featuring reworked, full-band
arrangements of tracks handpicked from his Northern Irish Music Prize-winning
album, EPHRATA, as well as EPs ‘Hollllogram’ and ‘All Round the Light
Said’, it captures a set that effortlessly leaps between intimate and raw, to
full-blown and celebratory.
Together, these ten songs, which span heart-stung paeans to love and loss, to ecstatic musings on becoming and belonging, uncover whole new depths of gravitas and meaning. At the heart of the release is Burnside's desire to expand upon his recorded compositions. From the gossamer ebb and flow of ‘Grapes’ to the brooding ‘Unrequited Kind’, each tale, uniquely transformed for the occasion, is a snapshot of an experimental artist in constant creative flux. Better still, with the expanded presence of cello, lead guitar and double bass, Burnside’s carefully-crafted repertoire feels more revelatory than ever before.
The spirit of the occasion, the one-off, unrepeatable energy within the walls of the famous concert hall and former Presbyterian Church that night back in December 2018 is not just tangible, but potent throughout. But, like most truly special live albums, informing the explorative spirit and energy of Live at the Elmwood Hall is a clear lack of preciousness about how each renditions pan out. It's this sense of unpredictability — Burnside’s open-ended instinct to allow his songs take whichever form they so might — that makes the album such a profoundly rewarding release.