The Swell Season... live, Royal Festival Hall, 26th October 2010

The Swell Season made a happy, triumphant return to London on Tuesday evening, with the large, appreciative RFH audience vociferous and adulatory from the moment they stepped onstage.

Hansard likes to mix up the set and usually throws in some unexpected covers, while respectfully playing the major hits. This time the covers were from Van Morrison, a fierce, howling, solo accoustic version  of "Astral Weeks", and later a faithful, soulful take on "Into the Mystic". Both were unexpected highlights, with Hansard both paying genuine homage to a musical ancestor, and demonstrating his own fantastic ability.

There was a relaxed atmosphere throughout, with Irglova often taking centre stage to sing her bittersweet, romantic songs. Also an interlude for violinist Colm Mac Con Iomaire's original work "Emer's Dream", and in the encore a guest appearance from alt country artist Sam Amidon.

Overall highlights were the Morrison tracks, everyone's favourite "In These Arms" and "Falling Slowly"... and all of it really. They never let you down...

Links: Setlist.fm - http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-swell-season/2010/festival-hall-london-england-3bd57cd8.html

Villagers live... Scala, London, 5th October 2010

Conor O'Brien's Villagers played a crowded Scala in Kings Cross on Tuesday evening. Demonstrating his typically strong-willed artistic auto-prerogative, he opened with a couple of new, solo acoustic songs (titles unknown) - confident that his focused, single-minded stage presence would force the bubbly audience to rapidly hush. And the gig floated upwards and outwards from there, each song gradually raising the level. With just the debut album in the repertoire there's not a great deal of material, but nevertheless, what there is is rich and deeply moving.

In stark contrast to most artists, the deliberate effort and control he puts into vocal enunciation is already something of an O'Brien trademark and  is even more obvious live than on record. Like a poet, it's not just the words that matter, but the aural sound of each specific syllable - he caresses and cajoles them like any other capricious instrument.

It was also a joy and a relief to hear him still tweaking and fiddling with the songs, rather than drilling through them on auto-pilot. So the odd chord was altered, a new bridge squeezed in, the instrumentation rebalanced... This showed an artist in love with his music and his muse, but also working hard to keep that fire burning.

A flame like this is special and doesn't tend to burn very long (.. is anyone else also half dreading the next Winehouse album?) ...  let's hope it's bright a while yet.