Co-Pilgrim bring a shimmer of summer sunshine and hazy festivals inside, to launch their latest album. Tim Hughes was there...

  • Co-Pilgrim
  • The Bullingdon, Oxford
  • 24 October, 2015

MICHAEL Gale is not your typical frontman.

Not only is he not given to posing, posturing and stealing the limelight, he doesn’t particularly like talking. If you are looking for thrusting stagecraft, look elsewhere.

Yet he is, and this is in no way an exaggeration, a creative genius.

A prolific perfectionist, he produces finely-crafted pieces of art as a jeweller turns out diamond rings; perfect slivers of shimmering country-rock and Americana, all different in mood and sentiment but all stamped with his unmistakable makers-mark.

But the uncanny thing is how quickly he does it, his band Co-Pilgrim turning out three albums in as many years. And there have been a brace of solo albums on top of that.

It is the presence of bandmates Joe Bennett on variously guitar, lap steel and keys; Joe’s wife Claire Bennett on vocals; and bassist Andy Reaney, however, which makes Co-Pilgrim a proper band.

Tonight’s show at a respectably-buzzy Bullingdon was a celebration of the band’s third album, Slows To Go, a predictably-lovely slab of alt. folk which pulls you in, holds you breathless and captivated, before releasing you skywards.

Joe is a virtuoso artist, able to turn his hand to anything, but it is his mastery of the lap steel that sends tingles down our collective spines; its haunting, plaintive wails alternating with some seriously rocking guitar.

For tonight’s launch the band are adorned with magpie feathers, Cherokee-style; a very Bennett touch. It is also left to Joe to provide the banter, Mike, deep in concentration, preferring to let his music do the talking.

Oxford Mail:

Gale is a Winchester man, and gets his kicks supporting his beloved Southampton FC, but his music channels the same stoned West Coast shine as Crosby, Stills & Nash or The Bryds, with flashes of Teenage Fanclub.

There’s definitely more California than Hampshire, but it’s still very British, albeit rural, and deliciously moody. A highlight from the new album, Flood of Tears, perhaps sums up the heady melancholy, as does the dreamy title track to 2013’s A Fairer Sea.

These are songs made for lazy summer days in long grass, hazy afternoons at festivals and nights in with someone you love. It is music to tickle the soul and lift the spirit.

5/5

* Co-Pilgrim's Slows To Go, is out now. Go to co-pilgrim.co.uk