I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: October 2, 2019] Tiny Ruins

I had originally planned to see The Tallest Man on Earth at the Met Philly on this night.  But some time ago he cancelled the entire North American tour.  Which is a bummer, since I’d really like to see him.

However, that allowed me to go to that night’s other wonderful offering–Aldous Harding.

Tiny Ruins opened for Aldous.  Tiny ruins is a band from New Zealand led by songwriter Hollie Fullbrook.  In fact, for this tour, Tiny Ruins was only Fullbrook and her guitar.

She came out front and sang about a half dozen songs in her beautiful voice accompanied by her exquisite guitar playing.

She opened with “Tread Softly” and she admitted the words were written by W.B. Yeats.  But she promised that the words for all of the other songs were her own.

I enjoyed listening to Hollie speak, although her accent wasn’t as strong as I imagined it would be.

She played two songs from the band’s Olympic Girls album.  I was really struck by the intricacy of the guitar parts–she wasn’t simply playing chords, she was creating a tapestry of music through picked notes.

In fact I was consistently struck by the interesting chord shaped she was making on the guitar neck.

After those two songs, she told us that she had once tried to get a job at the Wintergardens Museum in Auckland (the city that everyone in New Zealand hates and loves).  She said that she was immediately rejected for the job and so she wrote “Me at the Museum, You in the Wintergardens” as her revenge.

She played three more songs all from the new album and each one was just lovely.

I really liked the lyrics and the truly wonderful guitar of “School of Design.”

“How Much” opened with a delicate and lovely guitar intro.

Before the last song, she told us that the band had recently released Olympic Girls and that she herself had released a solo acoustic version of the same album and both were for sale that night.  Interestingly the track order is not the same on the discs.

I love the way they designed the covers to distinguish between the two releases.

The final song was the title track, “Olympic Girls.”  I absolutely loved the guitar line in this song.  It’s just fantastic.

And while there was some whispering and quiet talking through the set, I’m really leased that the audience was so respectful to this very quiet singer.

She was also very charming when I met her after the show.

SETLIST

1. Tread Softly ⇔
2. One Million Flowers Ø
3. My Love Leda Ø
4. Me at the Museum, You in the Wintergardens ß
5. School of Design Ø
6. How Much Ø
7. Olympic Girls Ø

Ø Olympic Girls (2019)
⇔ Tiny Ruins & Hamish Kilgour–Hurtling Through (2016)
ß Brightly Painted One (2014)