Gig Review, Breathing Space, Crewe Limelight, 10th Feb 2008
Three weeks after they supported The Reasoning in Cardiff, Breathing Space played a headline set at Crewe Limelight. Turnout on a Sunday night wasn’t particularly good; I paid on the door and got ticket number 23. I’m bad at estimating crowds, but I think there were 70-80 there, an improvement on the 35 at Warrington six months ago.
As ever, the band gave same tight and impassioned performance as at Cardiff three weeks before. It was almost a year since the first time I saw them at the Roman Baths in York, and it’s still amazing how much they’ve improved over that time.
The setlist included (I think) the whole of their excellent new album “Coming Up for Air”, quite a bit of the first album, and closed with a Mellotron-drenched version of the Mostly Autumn oldie ‘The Gap is Too Wide’. (OK, it’s not a real Mellotron, but as guitarist Mark Rowan once said to me, “have you ever tried to lift a real Mellotron?). They’ve dropped all the covers now, with two album’s worth of original material, they really don’t need to play them any more.
Unfortuntely the band struggled with some serious technical gremlins, which got worse not better towards the end of the set, with some particularly horrible feedback. Not enough to totally ruin the gig, but enough to make it less than perfect.
It’s a pity that current musical fashions mean such a great band plays to such small audiences. They’re playing a lot of gigs in rock clubs up and down the country, mostly in the midlands and the north. If you like well-crafted music with good tunes, tight musicianship and a seriously talented female singer, go and check them out.
