I must admit that one was a bit of a blind buy. The Llamas are a band that I kept putting on the "I must check them out list" but other bands kept coming and they were being put back at the end of the queue. I had missed the tickets for the first show at The Islington but managed to grab one for the second night before it sold out. I went to the gig with no knowledge of the bands back catalogue (something I tried to avoid usually) but still managed to recognize a couple of tracks from their latest LP Talahomi Way that I had listened to on YouTube (shame on me). It wasn't my first time at The Islington as it was there that I saw Jason Falkner a couple of months ago. It's a nice little venue with a set-up similar to The Half Moon in Putney where the venue is separated from the bar area. The stage was a bit small for a band like The Llamas but they managed to squeeze everybody on it.
These two shows were the first in two years for the band and even though they did a spot on job, you could feel that a couple of extra days of rehearsals would have made them a little more comfortable on stage, especially with the number of chord changes and tricky time signatures that Sean O'Hagan seems to fit in every song. You could could see bass player Jon Fell cringing after making mistakes on a couple of songs. Sean O'Hagan seemed to be enjoying the performance stopping at one point to shake an Italian's fan hand who came all the way from his home country to see the band's return to live performance. The show seemed to cover pretty much all their record with former guitarist John Bennett helping them out on a few numbers. I'm glad to have seen the gig but would gladly go and see them again with a few more gigs behind them (not that they tour much but hey...). Just bough Hawaii so at least attending the show finally triggered my discovery of their discography.
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