Billie Marten - Live at York Crescent by Lily Ajaib
Billie Marten’s captivating vocals can transport you to a completely different world for a night. Her music bonds people together creating a community of love and appreciation.
Following the release of her most recent album “Drop Cherries” in early April, Marten announced a UK winter tour including her sold out show at The Koko in London, with a capacity of 1,400. Her home show at The York Cresent held 250 people, making it a more intermate and memorable experience. Reminding the audience of her northern roots, she reminisced on her last show in a York pub performing to 4 people. She could only find humour in her achievements since, quoting “And I loved every minute of it”.
Her well-crafted setlist of old, new, and unreleased songs showed pure, authentic, raw emotion, as well as the natural talent that she was noticed for in at such a young age. Her band, which included instruments of strings, bass, triangles, keyboards, saxophone and, of course, guitars all played well bringing the studio version of her music to life.
A new addition to Marten’s band joined her on stage when a fan was invited onstage to play “Vanilla Baby” with her. Billie played acoustic guitar while the fan (Anushka) played electric. Marten smiled and described the moment as “an extraordinary experience.”
Time stood still during “Devil Swim”, a song from the new album showcasing Marten’s talent perfectly through a striped down accompaniment with just her vocals, guitar and a violin, played Harry Fausing Smith. She voiced her appreciation of Harry before starting the song, saying how she asked for strings while he was away from the studio for a new idea, which resulted in the demo for Devil Swim. The demo is the exact copy of the version on the album, Marten went on to describe how “it felt right to put it on the album as it was.” During this song, it was clear that Marten created an environment that could only be described as a community, where all were mesmerised by her performance. No phones in sight, just a sway from one side to the other. The room was full of love.
Marten called the rest of the band on stage, as well as her opening act Clara Mann, to surround one microphone and sing “Acid Tooth”. Marten’s stage “family” all harmonizing together, bouncing off one another brought the crowd to a standstill in admiration. Billie ended the song nervously asking the crowd “Did that work?”. Billie may have been playing 250 people in that room, but you could hear every single one cheering, realising they were witnessing something special.
Marten followed with a new song called “Swing” which reminded us of her ability to tell a story within her writing, using descriptive human nature throughout, a common theme throughout all her music.
The set lasted about an hour and twenty minutes with performances of “Arrows”, “Willow”, “Nothing But Mine”, “La Lune” and “I Can’t Get My Head Around You”. The show was a perfect night of live music, showing Marten’s pure artistic ability within the music industry. I believe that if anyone spent an evening watching Billie Marten perform as memorably as she did, they would instantly fall in love with her, just like how everyone did in that room at The Crescent. A perfect show to end the year.
Click here to see the photographs taken alongside this review
