Luke Wallace + Totnes Harmony Choir led by Ruairi Edwards at St Mary’s Church – An uplifting evening of environmentally-minded songcraft.

LUCKY SOULS IN SOLD OUT PEWS

The cool thing about churches, I reflect as the choir hits its stride, is they’re literally designed for this exact thing. Voices, raised in harmony – grace and order and proportion all of a piece with the soaring arches and gothic grandeur of the roofbeams.

Ruairi Edwards, charismatic choirmaster, is obviously chuffed to be leading his 40-or-so strong squad to the front at St Mary’s Church for this, ‘the first non-ecclesiastical event’ since its renovation. What a venue. What a support act! Ruairi’s even penned a mantra for the occasion. “There is light here / There is space here.” There sure is. 

We are treated, us lucky souls in the sold-out pews, to divinely beautiful renditions of work old and new. A setting of Rudyard Kipling. A sublime soprano solo by Sam Smith (not that Sam Smith). Fields Of Gold by Sting, a shrewdly populist palate cleanser. Ruairi’s own composition Ever My Heart, a joyous life-affirming air. Suffice to say it struck a chord. 

THE MAIN EVENT

After a short interval, ta-dah, Luke Wallace, the main event. Man, what a star. He’s very Canadian indeed, all diffident charm, white teeth and “heck yeah” – a globetrotting troubadour on a lifelong quest to make, in his words, “contemporary ecological and social justice music.”

Do your eyes roll at that last bit? I get it. But I’m happy to report Luke Wallace is no woke scold. In fact he’s a very intriguing performer.

Luke is a very, very good songwriter, blessed with an uncanny knack for an earworm hook. He’s a brilliant vocalist too. You might reasonably assume an evening of tunes about rampant inequality and the rape of the natural world would be kind of a downer. Far from it. 

“I’m in love / With the human race,” he begins, earnestly enough. Just him, a guitar, every now and then a stompbox for emphasis. Yet he holds this cavernous space in raptures.  If Noah Kahan can top the charts with songs about alcoholism and ennui, I wonder, why shouldn’t Luke Wallace with cheerful tunes about wildlife and compassion? 

Take Snowing In Vegas, inspired by a run of weird weather on the eastern seaboard. Except it’s not weird, is it? It’s man-made climate change. Anyway, he’s not hectoring us to separate our recycling, or boring on about blazing oil fields in the Middle East. He’s telling a story. With a hook. 

THE COOL THING ABOUT CHURCHES

There’s humour, too, loads of it. A serious song about “community and sharing” is deliciously leavened by an anecdote about him naively nicking a chip off a choir member’s plate in Cornwall the other night. How we titter at this transatlantic faux pas. 

That’s Luke Wallace’s secret sauce, I think. An English songwriter on this sort of beat would doubtless feel obligated to lace his set with irony, or snarling punk vitriol. But Luke, with his swell Americana holler and boyish good looks, can be earnest without being irksome. It makes him a very compelling artist indeed. You’ll hear a lot more of Luke, mark my words. 

I love Sons And Daughters,about the importance of treading lightly in life. It’s hippy, it’s well meaning. And catchy. Deserves to be big.

“Please push back against the terrible things in the world,” Luke entreats us, backed up by the Totnes Harmony Choir for climactic number The Arc – very much a marching song, referencing “…the speech by Dr. King where he tells us the arc of history is long but it bends towards justice.” And I’m like, hell yeah. Preach, brother.

Right now, more than ever, we need guys like Luke Wallace standing up and engaging big crowds on questions of great moral weight.  That’s the other cool thing about churches. They’re designed for that exact thing.

Words – Andy Hill , photo credit Steve Muscutt

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