Siren's Call

All Saints is an imposing church on the corner of The Drive and Eaton Road in Hove. Built as part of the late 19th century Gothic revival, its sandstone exterior and roof of Sussex oak provide it with a subtlety lacking in other Victorian churches with their brutal flint and brick. Once inside, the wide nave and gracefully tall arcades at either side give it a cathedral-like quality; an ideal space, then, for Anna Calvi to project the soaring sound of her swirling and slashing guitar playing and the perfect pitch of her voice.

Calvi, whose superb second album One Breath was released last autumn, completed a short series of British dates in Sussex on Tuesday night before heading across the Channel to play in France, Germany, Switzerland and, her father’s homeland, Italy. Opening with Suzanne and I, one of the two tracks from her eponymous debut album that featured Brian Eno, she then moved on to a trio of the most impressive songs from One Breath: the infectious refrain of Suddenly, the alluring siren’s call of Sing To Me and Cry, a track where Calvi effortlessly moves from Duane Eddy’s twang to Hendrix’s virtuosity. Reverting to her debut album for several songs, and a cover of Elvis’s Surrender, she then continued with the latest album: the menacing break-up song Piece by Piece was followed by the peerless and plaintive Carry Me Over.

Backed by an understated drummer and two multi-instrumentalists – one with hand-pumped harmonium the like of which I have not seen since Nico’s attempts to soothe the warring punks and skins on the Siouxsie and the Banshees tour of 1978 – the sound is complex and clear, and Calvi’s sometimes whispered vocals are listened to in respectful silence by the audience (the lack of an alcohol licence is clearly the best deterrent for gig-chatterers). And the austerity of her image - kohl-eyed mute meets the black and red of the male flamenco dancer – adds to this to create a taut and dramatic atmosphere.

The mood is punctured temporarily when Calvi speaks to announce a Bruce Springsteen cover. But when she dismisses the band and performs a bare-boned version of Fire, the tone of brooding menace is quickly restored. Once the band returns, the final few songs of the evening contain Calvi’s first three singles: 2011’s Desire and Blackout are followed by the set closer, her improbable re-working of the 1951 Frankie Laine hit, Jezebel. And, given the lyrics in this ecclesiastical setting, “if ever the devil was born/without a pair of horns/it was you”, deliciously incongruous.

Foliage and Fairy Lights

The Old Market in Hove was built in 1828 as a covered marketplace to provide fresh meat, fish and vegetables to the well-heeled folk of Brunswick Town, a Regency estate built a few years earlier between the villages of Brighton and Hove. The good people of Brunswick were strangely resistant to the market and it became a riding school in the middle of the 19th century. It was subsequently used as a warehouse until the 1980s, when it became the arts venue it is today.

The performance space is excellent: a wide 500-capacity room with a good view of the stage from wherever you stand. When we arrived there on Monday night, British Sea Power were already just over halfway through their five-song ‘mellow’ set that I had been warned they would play before the support act. Having already played the stalwarts The Land Beyond and Blackout, I got to hear two tracks from next week’s new album, Machineries of Joy. A Light Above Descending and Radio Goddard, with Yan on heartfelt whispered vocals, seemed to be – not surprisingly in the circumstances – from the mellower end of their trademark sound. With the stage bedecked with foliage and fairy lights, there was a hibernal atmosphere to match the never-ending winter outside.

Before British Sea Power returned to the stage for their main set, support act proper East India Youth played a short and intriguing set. The ‘youth’ in the name is not a collective noun. William Doyle, a sickeningly young solo multi-instrumentalist from Bournemouth, via East India Dock on the Isle of Dogs, is signed to The Quietus website’s label Quietus Phonographic Corporation. The three songs from his recent four track (one is a re-mix) Hostel EP are showcased here. The melodious Looking For Someone and Heaven, How Long?, a plaintive slice of shimmering beauty, sandwich the more experimental Coastal Reflexions, a litany of south coast train stations that has been described as the Pet Shop Boys meets John Betjeman. Using keyboard, bass, treatments and vocals, Doyle’s sound has been termed a sort of techno-prog; but there are waves of early New Order synths and a rich, clear voice coming through the krautrock rhythms that give his songs a pop sheen. His album Total Strife Forever is out soon.

Now in their tenth year, British Sea Power intended this gig as a warm up for April’s Machineries of Joy tour but anyone worrying that it would be a new album set would not have left disappointed. Despite playing eight out of the ten new songs, they play for two hours over the two sets and, with such a consistently high quality body of work to choose from, draw on all of the previous four albums, especially 2008’s Do You Like Rock Music? The new album’s radio-friendly title track kicks off a pacey main set that romps through barnstormers such as No Lucifer, Fear of Drowning, Waving Flags and Carrion. New song Monsters of Sunderland uses Phil Sumner’s trumpet playing to great effect and, on many of the older songs, he joins Noble and Yan on guitar to provide a behemothic sound. And if Abi Fry’s viola is a little lost in the guitar cacophony of these and new song K Hole, on other debuted tracks such as Spring Has Sprung and Loving Animals, it comes to the fore. With off-album favourites Bear and The Spirit of St.Louis greeted warmly by veterans of the live shows, it’s a crowd-pleasing set. There cannot be many better live bands around than British Sea Power when they are on this form.

When they return to encore with Remember Me and the racket of Favours in the Beetroot Fields from 2003’s debut album, and the apt “winter overture” of Larsen B from the Open Season album, there is no sign of Ursine Ultra, Mr Fox or Titan the robot. However, Hamilton is wearing a Bernie Clifton-style horse costume – of course he is - around which he struggles to play his bass. The word is that Machineries of Joy is the last album of British Sea Power’s deal with Rough Trade and, with drummer Wood relocating back up to Cumbria, could this signal the closing of one decade and the start of the next ten years?