Do you remember the first time you heard a piece of music and wondered why it had been written just for you, so immediate and personal was the impact it made? It's only happened to me twice, and the most recent of those was at my first Lau gig, now almost a decade ago. Since that time the trio have grown together to become one of the leading names in the folk world, with a reputation for innovation and imagination that few can match.
No matter how often you've seen them, Lau will continue to surprise, and this home town concert was no exception. With no support act this was a pure Lau affair. In the first set most of the stage was screened off, and the group assembled around one omni-directional mike to deliver an acoustic set. This was something I'd been hoping to see for the last couple of years, a stripped back performance with just the three instruments - accordion, guitar and fiddle - and Kris Drever's vocals. It was a reminder that behind all the electronic cleverness that's become their trademark there are three exceptionally gifted musicians, steeped in traditional music and intuitively feeding off each other's abilities. Watching them felt like falling in love again.
After the interval they returned to their now more familiar setting - a spaghetti trail of cabling linking pedal boxes, amps, mikes and some of their own wacky creations. Only at a Lau gig will you see a fiddle being played with two bows whilst strapped to what appeared to be a remnant from a Victorian coatstand, or a window frame gone wrong turned into a strange electronic harp. Who but Martin Green would create music by pulling on what looked like a bit of string?!
But it's the music itself that matters most and Lau continue to deliver. Fans would recognise the tunes and songs drawn from their four studio albums, but each one had some new twist to the arrangement and/or instrumentation, and there were some intriguing segues. Horizontigo morphing into Far From Portland was especially impressive. And the wonderful and haunting Ghosts remains ever relevant in promoting understanding of the plight of immigrants.
In between there's plenty of humour, and they take a delight in winding each other up, but it's very clear just how much they enjoy working with and off each other. The set ended with the trio once more coming to the fore and performing acoustically, this time to lead the hall in a rendition of Hamish Henderson's Freedom Come A' Ye. Musically, artistically, politically, Lau remain as significant and original as ever. As as superb a live act as any. Simply glorious.
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