On a hot and sunny Friday night, music fans of Bristol have crammed into The Thunderbolt (nothing will keep them from great live music, not even the one day of British summer) for the album launch show of John E Vistic’s ‘Welcome down the Night.’
The new album features collaborations with members of Primal Scream, Morcheeba, Jon Allen as well as Vistic’s own band and is a collection of stories of love, loss and as John says, the ‘landscape of the heart’.
After support from other gems on the local circuit, John Fairhurst and Oh, The Guilt, John and his suited and booted band bring us what we came for.
In all his shiny-silver-suit glory, Vistic is putting heart and soul into this performance, sweat dripping from the energy and not just the heat of the venue. He’s singing about dreams of pontiacs and cadillacs and old chevrolets, drinking Cotes du Rhone down the boulevard of dreams, lovers in the city and about how you just can’t drink yourself dry.
His admiration for the great writers Bukowski, Hunter S. Thompson and Henry Miller (who features as a song title) is prominent in his music as he belts it out with more than a hint of Bob Dylan stylistically. ‘What Will Be Will Be’ is a vision of existententialism, while ‘Gamblin’ Man’ is a diary of down ‘n’ dirty demons, performed with just enough gritty vocal and intense fret-thrashing to make it real.
Vistic is a grand mix of the unexpected. When you put Sinatra, 60’s pop, 70’s grooves, folk, electric rock and big band blues in the same room as poets, novelists and writers, this is what you get. The thinking mans’ brand, if you will.
His poetic expressions and melodic memoirs are captivating this audience as they hang off every word; screamed, crooned or otherwise. The air is filled with the smell of this Bristol summer night; maybe not blood, but sweat, beers and the heady scent of some funking loud and proud, psychedelic, mixed-breed rock ‘n’ roll.
Photo credit: John Morgan
Photo credit: John Morgan
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