Kill Your Darlings - check out Ed Laurie

Kill Your Darlings is the new club night from Bella Union and Curious Generation. This week's kicked off with Ed Laurie, The Monroe Transfer and Peter von Poehl.

Ed Laurie is a genius. He has a voice like syrup on pancakes and strums the most delicate, heartfelt chords on his nylon stringed guitar. The back up from cello, double bass, keyboard and percussion adds an eerie, haunting feeling to the Latin tinged songs. It’s a Dylan in a Cubanesque landscape with a punchy baritone voice…lush.

Unfortunately the night went down hill from there. The Monroe Transfer are 6 people playing viola, violins, double bass, drums, guitars, glockenspiel, trombone, ukulele, samples, effects & distorted recordings, all played with a range of picks, bows, mallets, sticks, screwdrivers and electronics. The hype is that The Monroe Transfer are already drawing comparisons with the likes of Sigur Ros, Do Make Say Think and our Explosions in the Sky. They wish. It was nothing but overkill. The strings cancelled out the guitars the songs were wishy washy with no lead, nothing to grab hold of. If I was in this band I would have fallen asleep before I learnt the first chord. Sorry guys.

Last up was Peter von Poehl Bella Union’s newest signing and apparently one of the most intriguing artists to emerge this year. Now I must say sometimes you just don’t get an artist or band because you can’t stomach their voice. It’s a very personal thing and not that the singer is necessarily bad. Think about ACDC - great guitars but terrible voice. I have heard the same said about Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan. File Von Poehl here. Now as I am open to other people’s opinions I am gonna link to his new video, “The Story of the Impossible” here.

Let me know what you think.

KILL YOUR DARLINGS will take place on a monthly basis at Soho Revue Bar and will feature an eclectic mixture of new signings as well as cool upcoming artists (both signed and unsigned).