Stormy night

GWENIFER RAYMOND / SAM GRASSIE, 19TH NOVEMBER 2025, CARDIFF PARADISE GARDEN

It comes as no surprise whatsoever to learn that Sam Grassie was a Bert Jansch Foundation Young Artist between 2020 and 2022. No doubt the late fingerstyle legend would have been flattered to hear his influence coming through loud and clear in a guitarist of the new folk generation. Glaswegian Grassie produces fingerpaintings of what feel like pastoral scenes shadowed with darkness; as such, he's a perfect support act for the evening's headliner.

No stranger to Wales, he performed in Green Man's Walled Garden last year, and is no less engaging in this rather smaller but equally horticulturally themed space. "I have a back-up set for when people are talking", he admits with a laugh - but the audience's respectful silence (well earned) ensures he never needs to fall back on it tonight.

If we're going to laud overseas visitors like Marissa Nadler for their entrancing takes on traditional American music, then it's only right that we should be equally fulsome in our praise of the incredible talent doing likewise on our own doorstep. Gwenifer Raymond may have decamped to Brighton, but she's clearly enjoying being back on home turf, delighted to have been able to nip to her mum's for cake between soundcheck and showtime.

Hers is mountain music, transposed from Appalachia to the Garth. Armed only with an acoustic guitar, she is a summoner of storms, a lightning rod, an orchestrator of elemental forces. That she achieves this without the aid of technotrickery, merely through skill, is astonishing. She was once quoted as saying of certain old bluesman "I loved how they could make the guitar sound as if there was more than one playing"; at times tonight, it sounds as though there might be three or four, duelling with each other in different time signatures.

Raymond's distrust of her own singing voice and consequent preference for instrumentals has had the bonus of giving her greater creative licence. The heroes of her youth, Nirvana, became so jaded with the verse-chorus-verse structure that they wrote a song about it; in refusing to be bound by it herself, she is free to be more inventive, explorative and adventurous.

This gig may be to promote new album Last Night I Saw The Dog Star Bark, but the show is stolen by the incredible 'Hell For Certain' from 2020's Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain. Its intensity and aggression betray her background in grunge and punk; not only is a hard rain gonna fall, but on occasion it genuinely pelts it down.

I'll be honest: the first glimpse I get of Raymond is at the merch stand afterwards. The combination of low/no stage, seated performer and cordon of lanky guitar nerds is not conducive to clear sight lines, even for a six-footer. But no matter: rather like being blindfolded, it feels as though your sense of hearing is quickened, and without the distraction of the visual those of us towards the back are able to focus purely on these expressive stories told without words, savouring an intimate audience with a virtuoso.

(An edited version of this review appeared on the Buzz website.)