\u201cIt’s wetter than an otter\u2019s pocket,\u201d says Billie Marten. She’s not wrong. We\u2019ve somehow reached autumn in July, with rain lashing down, hair soaked, and jeans that stick to your leg in minutes. For a Sunday afternoon, Sheffield’s streets seem still.<\/p>\n
We find shelter in the arcade, joining the queue of other damp music fans. This gig is worth braving the elements for: a chance to hear the great singer-songwriter Billie Marten in the intimate setting of a record store.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is great. Why don’t we steal something?\u201d Billie laughs as she walks into Bear Tree Records and picks up her guitar. She opens with \u2018Feeling\u2019, the first track from new album Dog Eared. The sound is perfect. Billie plays with a finger-picking style, similar to the sixties folk greats. In this small room you can pick out every plucked string and Billie\u2019s voice glides over the top, warming the room. The crowd listen intently \u2013 no shuffles or fidgets. In the silence between songs you could hear a CD drop. We are completely lost in the music.<\/p>\n
Billie Marten is playing this run of record store shows to promote a new album that interplays nature and emotions, highlighting the power of wild animals, wild places, and even wild weather. Billie laughs as she sings the lyric \u201cit’s raining heavy,\u201d but the storm is a perfect fallacy for the music. Dog Eared is an album I’ll be playing on Sunday afternoons in autumn, sitting under a blanket, sipping a hot chocolate and re-reading a favourite dog-eared book.<\/p>\n
We put on our coats and head back out into the rain, still smiling. The gig was the perfect way to spend a Sunday. As Billie joked at the end of her set, the only question now is where to go for lunch. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt’s wetter than an otter\u2019s pocket,\u201d says Billie Marten. She’s not wrong. We\u2019ve somehow reached autumn in July,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280706,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8817],"tags":[748,393,4884,1620,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-280705","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sheffield","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-sheffield","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114892875044075380","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280705","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280705\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}