Gabriel Rios

It’s a brave man who steps on to a stage in Leeds for the first time in your career and decides to cover Jimi Hendrix as an opening track, but that’s exactly what Gabriel Rios did and as an acoustic version of Voodoo Chile opens his account we listen intently wondering how he can follow it.

Rios, originally from Puerto Rico, then based in Belgium for much of his life before recently moving to New York to record his fourth album ‘This Marauder’s Midnight’ is supporting The Staves on their current UK tour and here in Leeds he has a much respectful audience lapping up his every move.

Flanked by double bass and cello players, Rios proceeds to guide us through six of the tracks from his new album, he makes no apology for this, it’s his first UK tour and he is sensibly using the opportunity to promote it.

Whilst not moving too far from the microphone he uses his facial expressions to convey his passion and in ‘Madstone’ he has a story telling approach to his vocal style, similar to Paul Simon, but the cello and bass combined with Rios acoustic picking and strumming builds into a stunning atmospheric track.

Stand out song of the set is the popular ‘Gold’, already remixed by Thomas Jack and has almost 38million listens on Spotify, but it’s the stripped back version tonight with Rios high pitched vocals providing the ambience. In a similar way ‘Work Song’ follows with such sparseness punctuated by several knuckle knocks on the double bass.

A short set, but ever so watchable, never boring and exactly what you want from a support slot, I’m sure this will not be his last visit to these shores and hope to catch another performance soon.

COMMENTS

• Lindsay Melbourne
  Great photos!