David Meadows - 20 April 2025

I learned two things tonight. First, that I can't clap in 7/4 time. Second, that Solstice are an astonishingly good live band.

I don't remember Solstice from when they started out in the 80s. I don't even remember the name. They must have completely passed me by. So I haven't spent the last 40 years saying, "Whatever happened to Solstice?" They came to my attention completely by chance just four years ago when I read a review of Sia, the album recorded during lockdown after recruiting new singer Jess Holland, the album that seems to have reinvigorated the band's career. It was a period when I was buying a ridiculous amount of albums. Denied live music for far too long, I was looking for anything that might satisfy me musically. I bought Sia based on a single review, without having heard a single note. Whoever the reviewer did a great job of selling the band. Though, honestly, I think they had me as soon as they said "violin". And when I heard the album, I realised that this could be my next favourite band. I just needed to hear them live to be sure.

Four years and two further albums later, I had yet to see Solstice live. There's always been some reason to skip their gigs, whether it's travel distance, or bad timing, or whatever, I was starting to think I would never see them. Until this gig, when suddenly everything worked, and I'm here for an early start in the basement of The Dome (the venue is literally called "Downstairs at The Dome"), a small room that fills comfortably with what are clearly hardcore fans of the band. The room is great, the sound is great, the lights are amazing for such a small venue. The only thing I would say is that this eight-piece band needs a much larger stage to move about on.

Support is supplied by Ebony Buckle (who will also be a backing vocalist for Solstice's set) and Nick Burns. I already know her music, but it's a revelation hearing it performed live in this format. The duo vocal arrangements are magnificent, and there's no sense that the music has been at all "stripped back" to just two instruments (keyboard and guitar). If anything, it's massively more powerful in this format than in the album arrangements.

When Solstice take the stage after a very short changeover I am ... "underwhelmed", is perhaps the best word here. Maybe it's because I have built up my expectations so massively, or maybe it's because I've just come from a stunning afternoon gig by one of my absolute favourite bands, giving Solstice a lot to live up to. But for the first song and a half, I'm just not clicking with it. The band play flawlessly, and with great passion and energy, but I'm not feeling it like I should. Then they get to the slow middle passage of Shout, and the four female vocalists deliver breathtaking harmonies over beautiful but restrained instrumental solos ... and it goes ... click ... this is the best thing I've ever heard. (Coincidentally, or maybe not, it was the exact same moment in Sia that convinced me this was a band to pay attention to.)

From that moment, I was completely lost in the gig, which just got better and better with each new song. Almost every song is drawn from their last three albums, with only couple of older things which I don't recognise.

Every member of the band is on fire. Drums, bass, keyboards, all get their moments to shine within the sprawling and complex song arrangements, all of them standing out loudly and clearly in in the room's excellent sound mix. Andy Glass, a guitarist who deserves much wider recognition, rolls from one melodic solo to another, and is matched solo-for-solo by Jenny Newman's violin—and honestly, it's this which makes Solstice stand out from the glut of modern melodic prog bands around at the moment.

But the show is stolen by the wealth of vocalists on stage: five of them (including Andy and Jenny), with Jess Holland taking the bulk of lead vocals but the two backing singers each getting a song of their own to show that they're far more than "just" backing singers. The potential of all these voices is fully explored and exploited, and it's beautiful.

And there's so much energy on the stage. Everyone is bouncing around as much as the cramped space allows, and it's mirrored in the crowd, where I see 60-year-old men partying like it's still 1985. I'm exhausted, and I don't dance!

Andy Glass handles most of the between-song chat, with the easy demeanour of a man talking to a room full of friends, and an obvious joy in what he's doing. He knows he's got the crowd in the palm of his hand, but there's no rock-star arrogance about him, just humble thanks and an obvious feeling of pride in his band, an incredulity that there are actually young people here to listen to this unrepentantly unfashionable music, and a well-deserved happiness in being in this position after 40 years. You hear him speak, and you watch the happiness of the whole band, and you can't help but love them.

I can't believe I wasted the last four years without seeing this band live. But I'll make up for it now, as often as I possibly can.

My new favourite band. That's all.