Wel­come Spring! I could­n’t find a bet­ter way to ush­er in the sea­son of renew­al than with the evening of folk and exper­i­men­tal artists at Moth Club for a joy­ous cel­e­bra­tion. Hav­ing attend­ed the equal­ly appeal­ing Samhain (Hal­loween) con­cert at Earth Hack­ney, this felt like an appro­pri­ate reconnection.

Scot­tish singer, song­writer and Clàr­sach play­er, Anna McLuck­ie opened the evening with a few tales of her life, from liv­ing in Scot­land, Man­ches­ter and Lon­don. She played mate­r­i­al from her forth­com­ing album The Lit­tle Win­ters – I was par­tic­u­lar­ly drawn to the beau­ti­ful and del­i­cate sound of Jay Bird.

Fol­low­ing artists heka played a thought­ful and med­i­ta­tive set of folk-inspired num­bers. The supreme­ly tal­ent­ed Flo­rence Rose Broom­field was next on stage with her band – full cred­it to this young artist for help­ing to curate the evening’s entertainment. 

The last time I saw Jim Ghe­di was at End of the Road, where he took to the stage on the day the heav­ens opened, and all but the most hardy scut­tled into the shel­ter of the near­est bar. Tonight he’s under the star­ry canopy of Moth Club’s famous glit­tery ceil­ing, yet his music still is redo­lent with the call of the wild the unpre­dictabil­i­ty of the sea­sons and the injus­tices of soci­ety. He is a force on stage – a mes­meris­ing pres­ence, his vocals emo­tion­al and rous­ing, such as on the haunt­ing Old Stones from last album Waste­land. He is joined by Owen Spaf­ford on fid­dle; and the con­nec­tion between the two on stage pro­vides many uplift­ing moments through­out the set. Jim also com­mu­ni­cates with the crowd – there are plen­ty of intro­duc­tions to var­i­ous com­po­si­tions – and there’s a sec­tion of songs ded­i­cat­ed to the late Dave Shep­herd who passed away only recently. 

Moth Club, Val­lette Street, Hackney