Billie Marten Dog Eared - In-Store Rough Trade Review

Words: Tom Gensler

Photo: Frances Carter

Billie Marten is an exceptional chilled indie-folk artist. On Friday 18^th July, she released her latest album, Dog Eared, of which we had the pleasure of listening to early and reviewing it. The album is a fragmented exploration of Billie’s conscious, by Billie herself, giving us, as an audience, a unique window into everything she is. It's an intimate album, one that draws of her previous works to create a unified, personal feel. Everything she’s ever done has led her to this career point and to this level of transparency. It's an album that's begging to be played live, and so we went down to her in-store performance at Rough Trade Nottingham to hear some of these songs live.

First of all, a note on her talent as an artist on her own. With recorded tracks accompanied by a band, it's easy to forget that Billie is a ridiculously talented solo artist in her own right. She is a fantastic guitarist and exemplary vocalist all by herself, and her recorded songs do this justice, but don’t fully showcase her as her own self. The entirety of this set was just her and an acoustic guitar, of which she changes twice during the set. She says that she’s playing a £40 guitar purchased from a magic shop, and then she also plays a guitar of a much better standard. This setup really suits the album, it shines all the spotlight onto the actual written quality of the songs and Billie’s presentation of them. It's the best way to experience this new music.

Her rendition of Glass, which we previously stated as one of our highlights of the project, is truly astounding. Her guitar playing is neat, crisp and infused with sparkly shining chords and jazz voicings in open tunings and it all really pays off here. Her usually angelic vocals feel harder over this song, and it works, she ponders about love and appearance whilst feeling restricted and unseen in her mental state. Glass is a wonder to hear recorded but is a completely different beast in the strip-back, more exposed live setting. It's an intimate song in any version, but it's extra intimate here. It's a true testament to both Billie’s songwriting ability and her creative perfomativity.

There’s a charming moment near the set’s midpoint where she joyfully questions if anyone wants a matchbox and then proceed to throw real matchboxes into the packed sold-out crowd. This is proceeded by five minutes of chaos as she expels every box in her position into the crowd. It's fun and charming and shows that despite the somewhat serious, and sometimes even bordering on sad, elements of her music are not her as a human. It's a welcome, positive and lovely interlude to the set.

A couple of songs after this moment, Billie asks for crowd for requests. After every fan shouting her entire discography at her, one fan asks for No Sudden Changes from Dog Eared. She laughs at the fan and jokes that she last played it a year ago and that she should really learn the album songs at some point. Again, a display of humanity in the cult star. However, she proceeds to play the song in full, beautifully. It's a high point of the set and a majestic performance of one of the sweetest songs of the album. Billie truly loves this album and this feeling is so tangible across every single song she performs. This is an artist who truly loves and believes in everything she makes.

However, the highest point of the set was the final song, Swing. Honestly, I enjoyed this song on the album but it hits completely differently live. Billie invites us as the audience to sing the vocal melody and it adds another layer to this song, one that takes in into another realm of music entirely. As with all the songs on the album, it's heavenly, but this live presentation is simply fantastic and just creates another intricate layer of beauty. Swing was the best song of the evening and the perfect closer to this short but sweet live window into the world of Dog Eared.

Overall, this was a fantastic set. Billie’s angelic vocals and masterful guitar playing made the evening entirely, and the songs fitted this so perfectly. Hearing a selection of the tracks from Dog Eared in this way was beautiful. The album Dog Eared is out now and is definitely worth a listen.