The Catenary Wires, Arrest! Charlie Tipper and The Lovely Basement at Bristol Thunderbolt

I have been wandering round Bristol, trying to find Bristol.
I queued up at the ice cream van: the ice cream man was grappling with non-frozen ice cream because he had been so busy.
'Have you got an ice cream disaster?' asked another customer.
Heat-drugged, I though that was the name of an ice cream, until I realised that it was a conversational comment.

You want to know about last night. Well, The Thunderbolt is a fab venue with good sound engineers and friendly staff. I have always loved playing there myself and it was great to go there and be an audience member for a change. Tim had said to get there early because The Lovely Basement are good, and he was right. There are two singers, a he (Kevin Bache) and a she: the she, Katie Scaife, has the most fabulous green guitar which made the Green Goddess shudder with jealousy back home in Barnet. They swap lead and rhythm roles, and their music has shades of The Velvet Underground but also the occasional country music reference, probably because of the blend of vocals (the drummer sings too). Actually I've just checked their Facebook page to try to find out their names and that's exactly what they say they want to sound like, and they absolutely do. A 'sound' means nothing without good songs, and they really do have good songs. I really enjoyed their set.
Arrest! Charlie Tipper are musical family to me. We have done a lot of stuff together: the Femme Fatale cover from 2016 and the video, and quite a few gigs including the Pop! Not Hate ones. Last night their set was tight and punchy, politically driven and probably the best I've ever seen them. The last song they played was brilliant, and reminded me of early Pink Floyd. Bloody hell, organising a seven-piece band deserves a medal- and so does organising all those Pop! Not Hate gigs which I understand made well over £1000. Great band + great politics: what is not to love? I am looking forward to playing with them tonight in Newport at Le Pub (that's a plug, BTW!).
The Catenary Wires played a set of songs mostly from their new album, and again, I think this was the best I've ever seen them. The acoustic shape of the Thunderbolt scrunched up all the arrangements, vocals, guitars, keyboards, harmonium, drums, and made perfect sense of the way those arrangements speak to each other in their music. Before, I've seen them outside and in churches, where the airiness of the environments added to the mood, but this was a different experience altogether. What lovely songs they write, and what lovely orchestrations: the band they have playing with them, Ian Button, Andy Lewis and Fay Hallam are brilliant.
They are playing in Oxford tonight. Go to see them if you can.
I took photos but they are rubbish. I looked into the screens of everybody else's cameras and they were taking much better ones. I hope these words are enough.