Fair to say that The Little Unsaid brought the house down.
We’ve never had a four piece ‘band’ before…with keyboards, a drum kit and all the associated leads, mic stands and general paraphernalia. It meant using the raised area at one of the room to fit them in….with the audience in slightly more orderly rows than usual.
This doesn’t really do justice to what each musician played but it’s reasonable approximation…..
John Elliott – vocals, guitar, keyboards
Sonny Johns – bass, knobs
Alison D’Souza – viola, keyboards
Tim Heymerdinger – drums, backing vocals, keyboards
The band played two 45 minute sets built from songs from across their three albums and recent six track EP Music:Nature. They started quietly with ‘Willow’ from Atomise and slowly but surely the band and audience began to connect so that by the end of the first set there was really warm and enthusiastic applause.
The second set was a bit more muscular (!) with a few songs building to stomping crescendos that had a spontaneous standing ovation at the end of ‘Chain’ and another after the powerful encore ‘Alive As’.
People wanted more and eventually John came onto the stage on his own and played a beautiful, wrinkly new song called ‘Dolly’ that is still very much a work in progress…
The full set is here:

We had a lovely mixed audience. A few hardened Little Unsaid fans…including a couple who’d already seen them play in Oswestry and Birmingham. We had a man who’d seen one of our posters while walking his dog. And another had seen a leaflet in Insomnia after the talk by Mark Wood. We had lots of regulars too and most only new the band’s music from the few youtube videos we’ve been sharing. But by the end the room was filled with love for The Little Unsaid and a real connection.
I’m sure we’d have them back in a couple of years time…but I fear they’ll have grown too big for Ryepiece by then. They were off to play The Railway Inn in Winchester on Saturday and then the last night of this particular tour, in London on Monday.
If you do get a chance to see them live then do. The albums are good but live, as so often, is a whole different experience.