Review: Ryley Walker/Mary Spender, St Georges

If the near-capacity crowd in St George’s impressed singer/songwriter Mary Spender it didn’t show as she delivered a highly self-possessed set with just an electric guitar for onstage company.

Her narrative songs, complete with Joni-esque vocal swoops and throaty asides, caught the stories of her life, with I Saw You an intricate portrayal of the bitter-sweetness of encountering an ex. It was well delivered, with crisp guitar playing nicely combining bass and rhythm, though, overall, a bit more variety of rhythm and speed might have added depth to her set.

No such isolation for Ryley Walker, however, and the presence of a few notable local bass players in the audience maybe hinted that his choice of the legendary Danny Thompson as sideman for this UK tour had added greatly to the appeal of the gig. Walker’s critically acclaimed 2015 album Primrose Green had boasted a fine band of folk, jazz and rock musicians so this duo was something of an unplugged version, albeit with his mighty Guild acoustic guitar wired with an old-school pickup across the sound hole. This was pretty much the equivalent of using analogue electronics and hinted at a direct link to John Martyn, an obvious musical influence, who also wired up his acoustic guitar – and also toured extensively with Danny Thompson as sideman.

The pair kicked straight into a raga-style boogie, jamming on a simple three chord riff that recalled Tim Hardin’s Morning Dew, Walker’s open-tuned guitar flailing up and down while Thompson’s superb tone and intonation effectively provided a rock band behind him. It was a format that would return throughout the set, almost to the point of frustration: Walker is a superb finger style guitarist but this modal drone scarcely revealed it, while the vocal numbers were mostly given the kind of strangled delivery Van the Man was (in)famous for. Even album hit Primrose Green fell into this trap and it wasn’t until the encore tunes – Always By Myself and Banks of the Old Kishwaukee – that his deft ‘American primitive’ evocation of guitarist John Fahey and the like finally emerged. Nonetheless, the chemistry between Walker and Thompson was a joy throughout.

For those of us in the audience (and I suspect there were many) that had seen Danny Thompson with John Martyn or even Pentangle there was a sense of deja vu here. It is interesting that Ryley Walker has settled on the English strand of early 70s acid-folk noodling that underpinned Bert Jansch, Nick Drake and other Thompson collaborators but he will presumably have to learn that it was also a bit of a dead end that ultimately ran out of time. What they are mostly remembered for is great songs like Needle of Death, Riverman and May You Never – classics of the art of songwriting embellished with distinctive instrumental flourish. The noodling, like the campfires, eventually flickered out in the night.