Kate Rusby – Victoria Theatre, Halifax: Live!

By Mike Ainscoe on 28th April 2025 • ( Leave a comment )

Kate Rusby – Victoria Theatre, Halifax – Sunday 27th March 2025

SPRING IS SPRINGING OUT ALL OVER

A new album (When They All Looked Up) is a matter of days old and we’re heading across the Pennines for the second date on Kate Rusby’s new album tour. Being Spring, everything feels bright and sparking in Rusbyworld. The stage is beautifully lit and it sounds wonderful – every detailed word and musical nuance crystal clear.

On the current jaunt she’s accompanied by a slightly stripped back band to match the mood and feel of the new songs. Damien O’Kane, Sam Kelly and Duncan Lyall make up a formidable multi-tasking, multi-instrumental battalion. Duncan in particular often downing the double bass to conjure up the sort of textures which have been increasingly more dominant in the sound over the recent past. By the third song in, a couple of comfortable older songs in the bag, he’s sat studiously at his bank of electronics. Damien and Sam strap on the electric guitars and ready to break our hearts for Today Again.

NEW SONGS

The new songs are plentiful and frankly provide the highlights of the set. The nervous thrill of nurturing a new song and setting it out into the world not just on an album but on stage. However, the transition is seamless. The Girl With The Curse has Kate warning against the negative vibe merchants who spread their toxic wares. She admits to being “small but really tough” so take note when she suggests that we go look for the stars.

Visits to Yarrow, Ettrick, and the village green and all of a sudden Kate throws in the curveball of ‘what if it’s her last album?’ Surely she’s right in her prime? Even with 23 racked up in the discography and 34 years of performing it’s a chilling thought that Kate Rusby might be mortal. Heaven forbid. Maybe more an indication of a state of mind that led her to dig deep, sometimes very, to unearth and put to record some of those songs which have been part of her half century on the planet. The Yorkshire Couple (check Youtube for a clip of her singing unaccompanied in some local, some ??? years ago) and The Barnsley Youth And Temperance Society (a mention in dispatches to Coal Not Dole) both set the record straight.

GOLDEN OLDIES

It’s interesting to see how they Rusby instrumental trio treat the older songs in the set – the “Golden Oldies” to which Kate refers. Certainly no less for the lack of a rush of melodeon or the clack of percussion. There’s still a sprightly acoustic swing; the organic vibe that contrasts rather nicely with a toe on the pedal board that transforms the gently picked guitar notes into clusters of reverberating shooting stars. However, it’s the transformation of Bitter Boy from humble beginnings into a thing of splendid majesty. The swell of the chorus – how pertinent the phrases “rise and sing” and “the saddest song“. Not heard by these ears since Stockport Plaza in 2019 and there are goosebumps on the goosebumps. Heroic how she steels herself to make her way through this. Thankfully she doesn’t go in for the kill by including Until Morning…

Thank the stars for a lighter moment or two in some jocular banter or an invigorating set of tunes so we aren’t totally broken. Rounding off by filling the room with waves of constellations from the rear stage mirror balls (and a full moon in the corner) the Underneath The Stars encore has to be saved until last because it simply can’t be followed. To subvert one of her own lines, how we wish tomorrow could be today again.