BRYONY DUNN & THE FOREST, Fieldfest, July 25

Further evidence that the popular music I wrote about in Melody Maker over 50 years ago transcends generations hit me with a pleasing splash of harmonic momentum yesterday as I listened to Bryony Dunn & The Forest, a quartet – singer/guitarist, keyboards, bass and drums – who, I was told, live on Leith Hill, an idyllic woodland a few minutes’ drive from our home between Guildford and Dorking where I used to walk our dog Shiloh. 

Sisters Bryony and Gina play acoustic guitar and keyboards respectively, the latter switching to harmonium to create the ominous Nico-like drone that opened their set at Fieldfest, now an annual event in our little village. Bass player Catherine Lawyer adds a top range harmony vocal, swinging the long neck of her Fender-like guitar, all the while dancing around and occasionally jumping up and down, a bit punkish, which belies their obvious influences, Seventies-era Fleetwood Mac, with a strain of country, maybe what The Bangles might have sounded like if they wore cowboy hats. Or, then again, with their long white skirts, puckish stage presence and songs about the environment, the granddaughters of the Incredible String Band. 

I don’t know the name of their (male) drummer and the lack of an electric guitarist, as seen on their website, suggests they weren’t at full complement at Fieldfest. Nevertheless, this didn’t matter because it was their vocal attack that impressed me the most, a surprisingly fat and full choral landscape that, if fortune favours their calling, is likely to become their distinctive trademark. Much is made of how remarkable brothers can sound when they sing together – for starters think Everly, Wilson, even Gallagher – but sisters too, like Este, Danielle and Alana in Haim, can also offer up something quite special, be it in unison or harmony. 

        Much of the group’s material was original, about eight songs in all, but they offered up two covers, Sheryl Crow’s ‘All I Wanna Do’, complete with rap-like verses, playful and unexpected, and ‘Gold Dust Woman’ from Fleetwood Mac’s 1977 eponymous LP that introduced the world to Stevie Nicks and Lyndsey Buckingham. “My favourite group,” admitted Bryony which surprised me not one jot. 

For all that the familiar aroused the crowd, many of whom sat beneath gazebos to shield themselves from the sun, I was more intrigued by their original songs, most of whose titles I didn’t catch but which can no doubt be found on their six-song debut EP, Soft As Ash, released late last year. Some were bouncy pop, others mellower like ‘My Love’, a song of longing, and ‘Never Trust A Cowboy’, a dire warning along the lines of Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson’s ‘Mamas Don’t Let You Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys’ that displayed their country leanings.  

I wish them luck. 

This photograph was taken from the web.
The inferior one at the top of this post was taken by me.