1000 Tiny Birds

The Japanese House (+Fake Laugh)

Trinity Centre, 2023-10-18

I do worry about how many of these posts do end up complaining about the behaviour of the audience (and, indeed, the artists indulging them), but the main character syndrome is on full display here with one girl next to me holding up her notes app in full brightness at largest font size with a not brief message to Amber Bain. Ah well. I’m already in a bad mood, having been left to queue outside in the pissing down rain thanks to genuinely poor work from Trinity. The songs are magical, of course - Something Has To Change was a lockdown obsession, so it’s wonderful to see it in full throat here. A lot of the new album has broadly settled somewhere in me where I recognise most of it, even if I can’t name them or sing along. There is still work to do in stage presence (delighted to see her success, but I just can’t see her in the Roundhouse or Albert Hall in Manchester), but as a performer, wonderful. Fake Laugh does a solo support set that fills me with the joy of pondering just how to sound so full with just a voice and a guitar.