Festival Music
Sam Beam and Jesca Hoop
The Hub, Edinburgh
Nicola Meighan
four stars
IN 2004, Sam Beam released a gorgeous serenade called Fever Dream, under his guise as rampantly hirsute porch-swing raconteur Iron and Wine. It was a warm and burnished ode to love in its myriad quiet forms, and there is something of its nature in Beam's current alliance with Manchester-based American singer songwriter Jesca Hoop.
Hoop's bygone unions include songs with Willy Mason and a fine turn with Elbow's Guy Garvey on her 2014 Undress LP, but it's Beam's own collaboration on that record which has proved to be most fruitful since. Earlier this year, Beam and Hoop released a co-written album of unhurried Americana duets, Love Letter for Fire, and now they're seemingly having a ball on tour.
The duo's live set was more stripped-back than on record, with the spotlight rightly on their effortlessly entwining voices, backed by a guitar or two. Amid amiable chat, these kindling psalms writ large Beam and Hoop's intention to make songs together with more than one narrative voice and version of events – from ardent call-to-arms Kiss Me Quick, through the fractured promises and truths of Valley Clouds, to elemental valediction Bright Lights and Goodbyes.
Both acts touched on solo favourites, including Iron and Wine's Broken Promise Ring and Hoop's City Bird. But they soared on their collectively-written songs, not least We Two Are A Moon. The track gave life to this lovely project, and its lyrics give the title to an album that plays out like a warm dispatch to (and from) the chambers of the heart; like a love letter to the flames of passion, the embers of past loves, the sparks between bright eyes. Burning like fire.
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