Blair Dunlop at the Kitchen Garden Cafe

Tucked away in the cosy Kitchen Garden Café in Kings Heath, award-winning singer-songwriter Blair Dunlop and his support Ellie Gowers delivered an evening of mellifluent tunes. Dunlop treated the audience to tracks from what is being called his ‘personal political fourth album’, both released and unreleased, with an endearing living-room feel. While the core objective of every number wasn’t always clear, his collaboration with Gowers towards the end of the night was a particular highlight.

Opening the night with an acapella rendition of a traditional folk song, the up-and-coming Ellie Gowers impressed us instantly with her soft-yet-powerful vocals. Her tiered green dress (making her feel like a ‘garden’) complemented the ecological themes of her first track, a quiet rage against the climate crisis entitled ‘The Sky Is On Fire’. Intricate finger patterns on guitar combined with winding lyrics that lamented human folly, describing the devil that ‘dances in the forest, destroying our mother’s skin’.

This was followed by a track inspired by lockdown-research into Gowers’ home county of Warwickshire, ‘The Ribbon Weaver’, telling a moving tale of the disillusionment brought by industrialisation. Even with a literary approach reminiscent of the Birmingham-born folk artist Katherine Priddy, and citing Joni Mitchell as a major influence, Gowers still managed to offer something fresh. Her recently released EP, Parting Breath, captures her style linguistically: an airy, ethereal tone that lingers slightly before it passes.

Blair Dunlop then took to the stage, with a quick guitar changeover due to a broken string that highlighted the cheery comradery of the venue. His first track, ‘Feng Shui’, was worth waiting for, with a steady guitar beat that set the tempo. Moving into an unreleased track about an empty café, Dunlop showed off his unique lyrical signature. Observations of monotonous everyday life combined with a heartfelt core message – ‘anything to help you when you’re on your own’ – giving the track unexpected poignance.

On request, Dunlop played his biographical track ‘Up on Cragside’, documenting the ambitions of Lord Armstrong, the Victorian philanthropist who built the world’s first eco-house. Minor chords constantly swerved the track in new directions, evoking Armstrong’s eccentric life. This was contrasted by a switch to electric guitar, with a haunting reverberation that matched the hypothetical feel of the following number, where Dunlop mused: ‘If I showed you what might have been, will you show me where I went wrong’.

Moving back into whimsical folk, Dunlop’s ‘No Go Zones’ was a satirical take on a racist article by Fox News warning people away from Birmingham due to its Muslim communities. The chirpy finger-style guitar backing contrasted well with the political content, but Dunlop’s overall attempt to redeem the city from ignorance didn’t entirely land.

Next up, his catchy track ‘Sweet on You’ from his 2018 album Notes from an Island was definitely sweet, if a little diminished due to mumbled vocals. This moved into a song about his years living in London before the pandemic, describing it as a kind of gentrified ghost town where ‘people come but they never stay’. Encouraging the audience to sing along towards the end added a new element to what had previously been a spectator-only gig.

Another album track, ‘Spices from the East’, had an evocative finger-style backing that resembled a sitar, with corresponding lyrics that captured how ‘King Charlemagne […] filled his gown with sprigs of thyme’. As Eastern metaphors inspire a lot of Dunlop’s work, a bit of context would have been welcome, but generally the artist reserved the conversational interludes for witty life anecdotes.

For the final section of the gig, Dunlop welcomed back Ellie Gower, who provided luxurious harmonies and added vocal precision to the remaining numbers. ‘Julietta’ was particularly beautiful, with satisfying rhymes on the name such as ‘we can make things better’ and ‘we should be together’. Dunlop switched to a dreamy electric guitar for ‘Peaks on a Monday’, with an ironic feel that felt lockdown-inspired.

As cliché as it sounds, my favourite moment was probably the encore, where Dunlop challenged expectations by inviting Gowers to sing the tune. Moving the microphones to the side and both playing guitars unplugged, this was a pure and blissful track that endlessly echoed throughout the room. This musical experiment suited the duo perfectly, suggesting that a bit more variation throughout the evening may have paid off.

The Kitchen Garden café was the perfect venue for both artists, preserving an understated passion that may have been lost in a bigger space. With Dunlop’s new album on the horizon, and Gowers set to appear during the Saturday of Moseley Folk Festival, I am eager to see what both artists do next.