WINTER’S END
VENUE THE DRILL HALL, CHEPSTOW DATE 12/04/2024-14/04/2024
CHRIS WALKDEN
Beatrix Players greet the crowd.
Many times, at both Winter’s and Summer’s End festivals, Prog has commented about being introduced to bands from beyond the UK who wouldn’t necessarily get the chance to play here, which goes a long way to separating these weekend events from others that have sprung up more recently. At this year’s Winter’s End, however, the focus seems to be on younger acts, a great move by the organisers. Like at many of the boutique events on the UK’s prog calendar, attendees (and reviewers) may no longer be in their first flushes of youth, but there are plenty of youngsters onstage delighting the crowd as much as some of the more established performers this weekend, showing there’s a lot of youthful vigour to be found with the prog world. A delight to see. Youngest of all is the bump carried by Beatrix Players leader Amy Birks, who will understandably be taking some time off soon to have her baby. Not that this visibly affects her performance with the new-look Players, who feature John Hackett on flute and Oliver Day on guitar, as they get Friday evening’s proceedings up and running. Birks possesses a delight of a voice, and from opener Snowflakes to the climactic What Do You Say is in total command of band, stage and audience. Today, they’re a very different group from the one that released Magnified, but they still enchant and enrich the listener.
Solstice: groove is in their hearts.
The juxtaposition of Beatrix Players’ nuance and The Fierce &The Dead’s full-throttle attack is a shock to the system for some, but the band, who have been performing in support of their excellent News From The Invisible World album for some time now, are very much a welloiled machine. While the new vocal-led TFATD are a grand proposition, not everyone is as in tune as Kev Feazey’s vocals, but despite the odd evident detractor, the band are their usual amiable selves and are aided and abetted by touring keyboard player and vocalist Tom Hunt, who helps up the prog quota within the band’s rich mix of post-rock, post-punk and post-metal.