The Jam Jar in Bristol is a big enough space that when cold weather takes hold the venue is a touch frosty before it fills up with warms bodies. But fill up it did and Blind Yeo’s opening act is Pictish Trail (aka Lost Map Records empresario Johnny Lynch), the bard, the brogue, the beard, a man who worked hard to get the audience toasty warm. His set came in two sections: the mellifluous and the mental. He opened with acoustic versions of songs from Thumb World, Follow Footsteps, Island Family, and forthcoming record Life Slime. Even though I have been listening to Pictish Trail for quite a while I am still taken aback by just how beautiful his voice is, with the same mesmerising quality of Father John Misty or Rufus Wainwright. This is matched with a keen, and often wry, sense of humour. There is poetry in the story of ‘Island Family’ which talks about imagining the souls of lost islanders floating in the air around the flames of the bonfire night fire on the Island of Eigg.
This marked the point in the set when guitar gives way to sampler and Pictish Trail demonstrated that he can cross a rave with a cèilidh by plugging in beats and vocal manipulation to get the audience’s blood pumping. From ‘Thistle’ to ‘Turning Back’ we had Lynch as techno-Prospero commanding the digital elements and also martialling the audience when he split the crowd down the middle, creating a mass of people linking arms and whirling round the dancefloor. He ended triumphantly with one enormous conga line followed by disgorging a large bucket of slime over himself which was then flung from the stage into the audience and back again.
Setlist: Into The Smoke | Infinity Ooze | Life Slime | Words Fail Me Now | Torch Song | Island Family | Thistle | It Came Back | Hold It | Turning Back
Blind Yeo emerged on to the stage through a cloud of smoke machine haze resplendent in hooded outfits, like a druidic football team taking to the pitch for a cup game, and launched into ‘Anam Cara’. Their look might be early Genesis, but their psychedelic sound is powered by motorik funk with drums and percussion that felt like the soul of Afro-futurism and the heartbeat of Latin America. The band are made up of a shifting roster of musicians lead by singer and guitarist Will Greenham and it’s not often you see a man in a hooded cloak with a third eye painted on his head (designed, he said, to hypnotise people into buying merch) rocking a Spanish guitar and moving across the stage like an interdimensional Druid channelling the late Wilko Johnson’s frenetic side to side movement.
The driving groove of the music coupled with the propulsive enthusiasm of the band sent an electric charge through the audience and people were dancing within half a song. By the end of their set all thoughts of the earlier cold has been dispelled, and everyone was in thrall to Charlie’s bass lines, Sam’s solid beats and local legend Mike on percussion who was a cloaked octopus as he seemed to play congas, cowbell, wood blocks, and myriad other percussive curiosities simultaneously. With these musicians keeping up the hypnotic rhythm, it allowed the front-and-centre double act of Anouska and Will to dial up the Shamanic frenzy with swirling keyboard lines and the kinds of blistering, effects-laden runs that shouldn’t be possible on a Spanish guitar.
Both acts combined to create an evening that was uplifting, life affirming and joyous, and given the brisk business at the merch stand Will’s third-eye worked perfectly.
Setlist: Anam Cara | Today/Tomorrow | Time | Colour Pillow (Kologo) | Love Not Fire | Garage Dreams |Caravan | Frik and Frak
Pictish Trail: Website | Facebook | Bandcamp | Instagram | YouTube (The Life Slime album is released in early 2026 and can be pre-ordered on Pictish Trail’s Bandcamp page or via the Lost Map website)
Blind Yeo: Bandcamp | Instagram
Review by Paul F Cook
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