Irish folk pop duo ‘Hudson Taylor’ consists of brothers Harry and Alfie Hudson-Taylor, who are taking the UK by storm with their current tour and upcoming debut album ‘Singing For Strangers’, due for release in March. Fresh from their tour in the back end of 2014 supporting Jake Bugg, as well as touring the festival circuit last summer, the boys are currently embarking on their own tour of the UK, before a selection of home coming shows in Ireland.
The boys took their tour to the famous intimate venue, Brudenell Social Club in Leeds; a City in which they seemed highly fond of. The Brudenell was maxed out, and the lucky crowd were treated to a 2 hour long set from the boys, who only left the stage briefly before their encore. The set list consisted of popular tracks from the duo such as ‘Care’, ‘Chasing Rubies’, ‘Weapons’, and ‘Battles’, as well as new songs from the upcoming album.
The boys spoke fondly of a collaboration they’d done with Gabrielle Aplin, ‘Beautiful Mistake’, which they performed beautifully without microphones and amps, luckily with a very respectful crowd – it’s moments like that in which the boys voices really shone, the haunting atmosphere was incredible.
The boys also had a little treat in store for the fans at the Brudenell – after telling the story of how Leeds meant a lot to them as they’d played their more often than any other city in the UK, they explained how they were going to film their new video there. Yes that’s right, the boys fllmed both the crowd and their performance for the video of their new single ‘World Without You’, with Harry joking that although the crowd looked like they were having a great time, they needed to look like they were having “an even greater time”, and boy did they do that. The boys were absolute speechless at the reaction, as Alfie joked that the crowd were free to “stop acting” at the end of the song.
Hudson Taylor have it all; not just exceptionally good and spine chilling music and lyrics, but chemistry and enthusiasm as well. The boys clearly love what they do, and it’s a good job since Alfie dropped out of school and Harry dropped out of University for them to pursue careers in music! Their stage presence gave me goosebumps, and I feel privileged to have seen them in an intimate environment, as their gig at the Brudenell definitely confirmed to me that it won’t be long before the boys are playing much bigger venues!
Laura Dean
