The Old Church, Stoke Newington
“I feel like I’m in a really gorgeous living room...”
On her first outing across the pond, New York’s June McDoom incites her modern brand of ethereal folkisms to an attentive audience on this holistic Friday night. Inside Stoke Newington’s welcoming Old Church, the results proved engaging in moments, disenchanting in others.
Settling into an impromptu cross-legged-on-the-floor arrangement, an imminent reminiscence of modern folk’s contemporaries accompanies this Friday evening. Staked against the likes of Adrianne Lenker and Weyes Blood, ‘Stone After Stone’ incites downbeat lyricism amidst featherlight vocal deliveries (“Gave all I had but it never turned out / So I cry to you and it all poured out”). Courtesy of her onstage companion Evan Wright, plucky, bass-driven guitar lines resonate throughout, intricately sauntering in this revered backdrop, yet amissing the extra trinkets and sounds which bolster many of the capturings on her debut EP.
A tangibly delicate intimacy continues to grip the audience's gaze, namely ‘The City’ (“I left the city for you and we talked the whole night through”), guided by sumptuous instrumentals and a buttery-soft voice which incessantly galvanises this apt space. ‘Piano Song’ and ‘Babe, You Light Me Up’ incite straightforward indie-folk renditions, stripped-back against tonight’s bare-bones setting, which even consumes the playback instrumentals - lost against this vacuous space and scarcely audible against the onstage performance.
Confessing her fondness for the age-old methodology of analogue recordings and hand-stitched editing, McDoom embodies a reminiscence on folk's traditional, heyday era - conjured in the recital of 60’s folk singer-songwriter Judee Sill's ‘Emerald River Dance’ which glistens amongst tonight's comforting surroundings, inflecting an air of Bill Callahan. Hoisted by these resonating church walls, McDoom concludes this evening with a heartfelt rendition of her most notorious track to date, ‘On My Way’, wafting ethereally into the greater depths of those attending with an eternal, lucrative tenderness and delicately-poised vocal synergy.
Whilst tonight's singer-songwriter may not have matched the likes of her contemporaries or folk-driven inspirations, June McDoom offers a more straightforward package, derivative of modern folk, to her newly-found audience across the pond. Accentuated by the stoic, welcoming choice of setting, an ethereal nirvana is offered in spades, guiding us into the elusive weekend which sees spring begin to blossom, and so, too, does this aspiring artist.
6/10
June McDoom's latest EP, With Strings, is out now via Temporary Residence and can be found below.
Photo is courtesy of Emilio Herce whose work can be found here.
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