Gig Review: Naima Bock At The Ivy House

Naima Bock is a gem of a performer with an album that is to be revered for its success at pulling at your heart strings in every direction plausible.

Naima Bock has been quietly making a name for herself. Following her departure from Goat Girl in 2019, her debut album ‘Giant Palm’, released in 2022, was an embraced feat in folk song with a touch of Brazilian influence every here and there, establishing her own sound in doing so. I’d been won over by her initial single ’30 Degrees’ so the full-length album was a stunning addition to her slow building catalogue of solo music. Come September this year, and her second album ‘Below A Massive Dark Land’ has somehow surpassed the efforts of her debut, an expanded pallet of instrumentation and intensely intricate compositions made to sound easy on the ears. A venue like The Ivy House suits the intimate nature that goes hand in hand with Naima’s sound, I think, watching the room pack itself out well before the opening act, as we prepare ourselves for a night of wholesome joy, sorrow, and splendour.

It’s a last-minute opener in Hoy Chorale, who doubles up as Naima’s guitarist and keys player. ‘You laugh but you try to spell it’, when he introduces the name of his act further along in the set, and it does leave me puzzled trying to spell it out in my head before he does it for us. He steps in for Bingo Fury, who helped produce Naima’s recent ‘Below A Massive Dark Land’ as well as releasing his well lauded debut earlier on this year. Across the extended set, I’m charmed to the point of declaring him as my opening act of the year, in a set that ends with the audience in the palm of his hands. Comedy chops in between songs, the whimsical realism within his lyrics, ‘Palm Sunday’ standing out as a meandering six-minute song that falls into Daniel Rossen in terms of the intricate guitar work. With the addendums of saxophone, cello and keys, I leave the venue with an urge to hear it all over again.

Now for Naima. Joined by her touring band (Cassidy Hansen on drums, Meitar Wegman on sax, Oscar on keys and guitar, and Clem Appleby on bass), the last hurrah of her UK tour opens with ‘Feed My Release’, a sweet-sounding tune that is laced with a subtle sadness with each vocal shift from Naima. ‘Kaley’ is a deviation from anything Naima, in its loudness and genre it references from, showing off her potential for an even wider range of sonics. The opening track of Below, ‘Gentle’, has a group of us at the front unintentionally swaying at the same time. A trio of girlfriends stood next to me hold one another as they share this sweet moment all pinned by the bridge’s hard hitting repeated lyric ‘Well, you want me to be gentle, fragile/You want me to stay young’.  An attempt to film the song is abandoned by one of the girls, giving herself to the moment with a badly zoomed in and unfocused footage left on her phone as a memory for this tender spot within the set. ‘Morning’ is another well greeted throwback to her debut album, a sigh of excitement when the first chords are strung from some members of the audience. ‘Giant Palm’.  A live performance can be straight forward (no talking, pure setlist, much like the Fontaines DC gig I attended the following day) but what I look for, and somewhat appreciate further, is a show that strikes the balance of music and engagement, found in a perfect amount here tonight. Talking to the audience between songs for anecdotes of the tour and general appreciation for those who stand before her, a tale of failed attempt of audience participation results in the Ivy House crowd wanting to partake as we all willingly harmonised to Naima’s leading voice.

Naima Bock is a gem of a performer with an album that is to be revered for its success at pulling at your heart strings in every direction plausible. Tonight stood before us a folk Torre de force who packed out The Ivy House on a severely cold Thursday evening with music so warming and enriching that you could almost forget.