#33 Delaney Davidson, Golden Dawn

6 March 2018

A hot Tuesday night in early March, on the back of our hottest summer on record and our wettest February.

There's 18 days to go before Golden Dawn closes its doors, but not too late for another unexpected discovery. The support act, Motte, was a complete unknown for me, and altogether captivating with a solo mix of looped violin, synth and vocals. Ethereal and other worldly, carefully composed and unpretentious. Meditative and unsettling, drawing a huge breadth of sounds and sensations from a violin used to its full extent. 

Delaney Davidson performed with SJD to open the main act, with a new number, Shining Day, along with Such a Loser. The two combine well, but Davidson is consummate as a solo performer. Looping riffs, rhythms, harmonica, vocals over, through and in and out of each other in some pulsating driving tracks that  capture you and drag you into their groove. 

He delivers a string of relentlessly driving modern blues numbers that to all intents and purposes sound like he has a band with him, rather than delivered solo. Such is both his musicality and the power of a looper used well.

He finishes the night with Don't Let the Devil Fill you up with Doubt, and implores the audience to "keep doing whatever you're doing and keep pushing fucking hard as if your life depended on it, coz it does."