St. Vincent - At The Proms (2025)

As the lights went down at the Royal Albert Hall on 3 September 2025 you could have heard a pin drop. The formidable St. Vincent, née Annie Clark, was about to conclude the world tour for her album 'All Born Screaming' with her debut at the 2025 Proms. It was a fabulous piece of programming and would prove to be one of the live music highlights of the year. Jules Buckley and his Orchestra played 'We Put A Pearl In The Ground, providing an extra-terrestrial wash of sound as St. Vincent herself sashayed on stage, and then we were into 'Hell Is Near' and her idiosyncratically soulful vocals sat effortlessly within the electric density of the orchestration, and the star was so pleased she looked like she had to stop herself applauding the orchestra. 'Violent Times' was like the theme for a magnificently magisterial lost Bond film, and then she delivered 'I Prefer Your Love' with a heartfelt simplicity which didn’t so much cut through the lush orchestration as cut with it. The song was poetic and transcendent, creating simplicity through complexity, gracefully accentuated with a glockenspiel. Then the moment that had to come, and which we were all waiting for… St. Vincent strapped on her guitar, and the orchestra started playing 'The Strangers', which was deliriously like a Kurt Weill-Maxwell Anderson Broadway song for the 21st Century. 

The politely metronomic introduction in Rachel Eckroth and Peter Riley’s arrangement featured the bass drum sweeping the street clean for the approaching steam roller which was St. Vincent’s guitar solo. On 'Black Rainbow' the incisive intelligence of her lyrics were superbly served by the string section which adroitly underscored the emotional nuances, while the music climbed a mountain up to a cliff edge and then stepped off into silence. For 'Marrow', the staccato, ecstatic urgency of St. Vincent’s guitar was followed by an unbearably suspenseful setting by Peter Riley which had the orchestra tightening the ratchet of tension, until it was finally released in the gushing spurt of her ferocious guitar solo. The arrangement perfectly matched the technicolour surrealism of St. Vincent’s song-writing - terse and dense and rich, violent and beautiful. Jules Buckley’s arrangement for 'The Bed' transformed it into a piece of otherworldly exotica, a lullaby from a different dimension. The marimba gave a gamelan colouring and the string section provided a trampoline for the lyrics, lifting the song and perfectly enhancing it instead of overwhelming it. It was revelatory what a perfectly shared endeavour this was, St Vincent and her guitar in total collaboration with orchestra. Sam Gale’s arrangement gave 'Now, Now' an irresistibly building logic with its insistent Raymond Scott-style electronica, and the strings provided a swirling emphasis. 

'Live In the Dream' was an emergency room anecdote, related like a dreamy beach ballad in Tom Trapp’s arrangement, but it was a J.G. Ballard beach ballad, with the waves breaking on an apocalyptic Waikiki. St. Vincent played a solo which sounded like Hawaiian slack key guitar, lyrical and luxuriant, and it was wonderful the way the orchestra stayed out of her way while always supporting the sense of the song. Her guitar gently screamed, howled at the moon, crooned with ecstasy, while the orchestra was a gentle chaperone. On 'The Nowhere Inn' Rachel Eckroth and Peter Riley’s arrangement provided sounds like a Martian mariachi band. St. Vincent’s guitar pried open the doors of perception and the orchestra followed her through, trumpets calling valiantly as she intoned her hypnotic, shamanistic, incantatory vocals “We’re all at Nowhere and where are you now?”. The same arranging duo transformed 'Los Ageless' into a forlorn but defiant ballad for a film noir heroine with the string section charting the ECG ups and downs of an unravelling endeavour. 'New York' is one of St. Vincent’s best known songs and for this Jules Buckley arrangement she climbed down off the stage and walked among us...or at least among the lucky Prommers in the standing section. She had the whole hall clapping, and when she started jumping up and down she damn near had it pogoing. 'Paris Is Burning' closed the show, before rapturous applause encouraged her to come back for a couple of encores, ending a triumphant performance at the BBC Proms.   

Track listing

01 We Put A Pearl In The Ground (arr. Sam Gale)
02 Hell Is Near (arr. Sam Gale)
03 Reckless (arr. Rachel Eckroth)
04 Violent Times (arr. Jochen Neuffer)
05 I Prefer Your Love (arr. Jochen Neuffer)
06 The Strangers (arr. Rachel Eckroth/ Peter Riley)
07 Black Rainbow (arr. Rachel Eckroth/ Jules Buckley)
08 Marrow (arr. Peter Riley)
09 The Bed (arr. Jules Buckley)
10 Smoking Section (arr. Rachel Eckroth)
11 Now, Now (arr. Sam Gale)
12 Live In The Dream (arr. Tom Trapp)
13 The Nowhere Inn (arr. Rachel Eckroth/ Peter Riley)
14 Digital Witness (arr. Tom Trapp)
15 Los Ageless (arr. Rachel Eckroth/ Peter Riley)
16 The Party (arr. Jochen Neuffer)
17 New York (arr. Jules Buckley)
18 Paris Is Burning (arr. Jochen Neuffer)

19 Candy Darling (arr. Rachel Eckroth)
20 Slow Disco (arr. Jules Buckley)

Concert review by Andrew Cartmel.

Public Service Broadcasting - This New Noise (2022)

Tonight, 30th August 2022, Public Service Broadcasting performed a brand new, especially composed piece, as part of the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. The London-based retro-futurist rockers celebrated 100 glorious years of BBC Radio with a newly commissioned album-length work entitled 'This New Noise'. They were joined by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Jules Buckley, and the whole concert will be broadcast on BBC4 on Friday 2 September 2022, but while waiting for that you can enjoy this recording of the debut, and possibly only, performance of this brand new work. 

Track listing

01 Ripples In The Ether (Towards The Infinite)

02 This New Noise

03 An Unusual Man

04 A Cello Sings In Daventry (with Seth Lakeman)

05 Broadcasting House

06 The Microphone (The Fleet is Lit Up)

07 A Candle Which Will Not Be Put Out

08 What Of The Future? (In Touch With The Infinite)

The folder contains two files - the full unedited concert, and an album of just the music, split into individual tracks and with the applause and announcements removed. 

Laura Marling - BBC Proms 2020 (2020)

I may have mentioned before that I'm a massive Laura Marling fan, having followed her from the very start of her career, and I've loved everything she's ever done. When I heard that she'd been selected to play a set as part of this year's Proms at the Royal Albert Hall, with orchestral arrangements by the pioneering un-conducted 12 Ensemble, I couldn't wait to hear it. It was broadcast on Sunday, and was every bit as good as I hoped it would be, and so for anyone who missed it here is an audio rip that you can download and listen to at your leisure. I'm sure that anyone who saw it would have come away a fan, even if they didn't really know her work. 

Track listing

01 The Suite: Take The Night Off / I Was An Eagle / You Know / Breathe
02 Tap At My Window
03 Fortune
04 The Valley
05 What He Wrote
06 Song For Our Daughter
07 For You
08 Blow By Blow
09 The End Of The Affair
10 Still Crazy After All These Years
11 Wild Fire
12 I Hope We Can Meet Again
13 How Can I?
14 Daisy
15 Once
16 Salinas
17 Next Time
18 Goodbye England (Covered In Snow)

The players:
Laura Marling (singer, guitar)
Nick Pini (bass)
12 Ensemble