Stornoway’s first visit to Belfast saw them received warmly by the (at first) strangely tentative crowd which filled the Black Box on Wednesday night. The audience remained eerily silent during support act Gareth Dunlop’s opening song, as though weighing up his worth, but became livelier as the night progressed. By the time the Oxford foursome arrived on stage, they were greeted with hesitant cheers from the waiting crowd, and after beginning with recent single ‘I Saw You Blink’, a radio-friendly upbeat song about love and blue eyes, the response was more than encouraging.

BY ROISIN MURRAY

The band, which formed in 2006, have been emerging on the UK music scene slowly over the past year, having appeared on ‘Later… with Jools Holland’ in November, and are currently being played intermittently by Radio 1. The band’s bookish image sometimes appeared slightly at odds with the purity of their music, and blindly listening, one may have assumed their garb would be more stereotypically tie-dye and free-flowing. Although they have previously been compared to Mumford and Sons, probably due to their folky sound, their songs are decidedly less commercial, and their first single, the beautifully pure ‘Zorbing’, went down a treat with the Belfast crowd.

Brian Brigg’s impressive vocal (and lyrical) prowess was demonstrated effectively by solo endeavour, ‘November Song’, a spellbinding a cappella lament, which made this listener very eager to hear the album, Beachcomber’s Windowsill, to be released in May of this year. His humorously awkward and entertaining asides also endeared him to the crowd, telling stories of the band’s recent visit to namesake Stornoway, of escaped Argentinean convicts, and of sheep, a fail-proof combination.

It’s possible that this band will be filed away under the ‘alternative’ heading and forgotten, without much critical consideration from the music industry, but this would be to overlook the originality and sheer talent they have to offer the somewhat samey popular music scene. As they descend upon festival season, playing Glastonbury for the second year running, their music career is climbing towards a teetering edge, from which they will either soar to new heights, or fall into obscurity. I know what I’m hoping for!