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The Canadian singer songwriter Dallas Green has been making indie folk and alternative music under the moniker City and Colour since 2005, having only released his debut album at 25 years old. Green announced earlier this year that he had picked London as the place to celebrate the anniversary of the album, as the UK was the first place Green ever toured outside of Canada. He announced the gig in an interview, stating: “This night is a celebration of that connection and for everyone who has spent time with this record over the years. These songs became yours a long time ago. As always, thank you for listening."
So of course when the night finally arrived last Sunday, the audience was teeming with so many more emotions than just excitement: pride, joy, and bittersweet nostalgia of the past 20 years listening to ‘Sometimes’. Discussions of what surprise songs might be played filled the air as people around buzzed that they had been waiting years to see City and Colour.
At promptly eight, the lights dimmed in the hall, and a single spotlight shone down onto Green as the night commenced with “...Off By Heart”. Standing alone under the spotlight, Green’s voice and single guitar were the only sounds echoing through the venue. A beautiful melancholy blanketed the voices of the audience. If you hadn’t known any better one might think that Green was the only person in the whole room.
Green mentioned several times how he wrote ‘Sometimes’ “as a kid”, and how although he “doesn’t relate to the content anymore”, he was happy to be reconnecting to the music and remembering who he was at the time of writing them. He joked that throughout the show he would be constantly changing guitars. He laughed, “I used to write each song with a completely different tuning, and then when people started to actually listen to my music I forgot what I had done to find that sound.”
When it was time for ‘Hello, I’m In Delaware’, blue and purple lights illuminated the auditorium. The audience whispered back to Green, “But I will see you again, I will see you again / a long time from now” and tears were already starting to fall.
‘Comin’ Home’ came with a storytime from Green, explaining that he actually wrote the song while visiting London. “I was having an argument with my girlfriend back home on one of those payphones where you paid with a calling card. Then the calling card ran out of money so I had to go fill it up at one of the shops then go back to the payphone and continue the argument”. He added that the payphone was near Royal Albert Hall too, adding a special memory to the song and the moments to come.
To make matters even better, right as the song was starting a sole audience member yelled out: “Did you win the argument?”. Green stopped for a moment to say, “well clearly not, because I wrote this really sad song”. The audience laughed along with Green and everyone sang along to the song with smiles.
After finishing out the entirety of ‘Sometimes’, Green thanked the audience for their support over the last 20 years. It was a beautiful moment of connection throughout time and music, but there was still so much more to come. After a quick intermission, Green returned to the stage but this time not alone. He was joined by longtime friend and musician Mathew Kelly on the pedal steel guitar, and they began the second act with ‘O’ Sister’ and ‘Constant Knot’, a song he hasn’t performed live since 2012.
Many other deep cut songs were played, including a hauntingly sweet rendition of ‘Twilight’ by Elliott Smith. Other songs were introduced, such as ‘Waiting…’ and ‘Underground’, that were noted by Green that “everyone thinks [these are] sad but it’s not, it’s joyful”. Soft sighs were heard around when ‘As Much As I Ever Could’ began and tears were definitely shed. Green spoiled his fans even more with the live debut of ‘Rain’, a single from 2017.
The show closed out with Green’s most treasured songs, ‘The Girl’ and ‘Sleeping Sickness’, both from his 2008 album ‘Bring Me Your Love’. By the end of the night the whole audience was on their feet and singing together joyously with Green, happy tears this time, that they were a part of something so much bigger than just a concert, but an appreciation of memories, and a beautiful commemoration of the artist City and Colour.
Molly Spencer
