Music > Live Reviews

The Bookshop Band @ The Book Hive

09/03/16

As a woman whose favourite song is Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights, I’ve just been to the perfect gig. They claim to be ‘not particularly literary people’ but Ben Please and Beth Porter aka The Bookshop Band, manage to craft unexpectedly haunting songs inspired by a vast range of literature. They were originally commissioned by Mr B’s Emporium of Reading Delights, a much loved independent bookshop in Bath, to inject music into author events. So it seems appropriate that this Tuesday evening they appeared at another much loved independent, The Book Hive, to introduce Norwich to their charming brand of literary folk. 

Songs based on books and played in a bookshop? It seems such a simple and effective idea it’s surprising no-one has thought of it before. And until you’ve experienced a gig in a bookshop you can’t imagine quite how wonderfully intimate and enchanting it can be. The rows of books contain the sound and give the music a beautiful clarity. We arrived early and even the sound check made everyone stop and listen to the crystalline beauty of Beth Porter’s soprano. 

Both musicians are multi-instrumentalists, using the cello, guitar, ukulele, glockenspiel and harmonium. Each song takes its inspiration from a novel, sometimes a literal interpretation, sometimes a tangential one. Titles used included everything from modern bestsellers The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce and Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel to well loved classics like Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll which gave rise to the wonderfully swirling song Curious and Curiouser. But let me reassure you that reading the source material is by no means essential. The songs stand on their own as gentle explorations of loss, love and in my particular favourite (based on Ned Beauman’s novel Glow) mischievous foxes. Another highlight was the song crafted entirely from the first lines of novels weaved together to create a surprisingly humorous and cohesive story (with a Dickens-heavy chorus to boot).

If you didn’t manage to catch them this time around The Bookshop Band should be touring the East of England again in the summer months. Or if you fancy exploring their music in the meantime they will be releasing a stunning ten albums this year having finally recorded the entirety of their back catalogue!