Friday 23rd May 2025

Yes Basement, Manchester, England

“I’m a big Goth. I love ghost stories,” Toria Wooff says from the stage, to the surprise of nobody present. With her raven-black hair and bride-white laced blouse, she already looks as though she has stepped through time, down from the Lancashire moors which overlook her hometown of Horwich.

Toria is about to launch into her own ghost story, the haunting self-penned folk song ‘The Waltz of Winter Hey’. But before she does, she has borrowed another ghost story she wishes to tell us, that she heard up in Scotland.

The Piper and the Dog is a story of Edinburgh Castle. Hundreds of years ago, a tunnel was discovered near the castle dungeons, and while it appeared to travel all down the Royal Mile underneath the city, nobody knew exactly where it went. The townsfolk sent down a brave piper to explore, and his dog followed him. Up above, the townsfolk could hear the man’s pipes as he played and so could follow where he went.

At some point the sound of the pipes ended suddenly, as though stopped by an external hand. In telling the story, Toria does not evoke the name of Great Hand, the spirit that is said to dwell in these accursed underground paths. Perhaps it is just as well, on a night where 66 souls have packed into a close, dark underground basement of their own to hear her vocal pipes play. But she does tell us that the piper was never found. And that when the dog made its way out, the townsfolk found its hair singed as though by flame.

The basement on Charles Street in Manchester does not appear to have any ghosts of its own, none apparently having passed over with the lease in 2018, when this antiques warehouse built in 1912 was converted into a music, food and events venue. But it is a worthy setting regardless for Toria Wooff’s haunting brand of Gothic folk. After descending the steps to the basement, I am enveloped by its thick darkness. With the exception of the red lights of the stage, the prevailing light comes from dim orange conches scattered around the room.

My own discovery of this artist came not from dungeons, but has proved just as fascinating to explore. Just a few short weeks after first hearing her name (pronounced like “roof”) and deciding to listen to her sole, self-titled album many times over, I am here listening to the whole thing played live. I marvel not only at the swelling power of her vocals, which are as immaculate as they are on the record, but at how quickly these songs have become familiar to me. The bones of the songs are strong, and in Toria’s performance she fills them with body.

It is a night of bones, for the six-song set of the opening act also proves strong. Appropriately enough, there is in this basement a Creepy Crawly, the stage name of Rachel Cawley. One of the things I find so rewarding on nights like this is the opportunity to take a chance on new music and have that vindicated; to not only experience a talented local-born artist like Toria Wooff take flight, so soon after discovering her name, but to hear emerging talent like Rachel’s.

Backed by Tom Latham on electric guitar, Rachel sits at her keys and sings a compelling set of deep and meaningful songs, including ‘Afraid to Fail’, ‘Slowly Goes the River’ (“a song lamenting the linear passage of time,” she says) and ‘December ’88’, a song which becomes even more profound when you learn the story behind it. This is true art. Rachel ends by picking up a banjo, warning that this “could go badly”. However, ‘All the Stars in the Sky’ proves anything but. A banjo on a strong-boned song is a memorable feeling, and I’m sure I’m not the only new fan Rachel has acquired from the basement tonight.

But the night truly belongs to Toria. She shapes it to her will. Backed by her friend Polly Virr on cello, a resonant instrument that fills the room and swells our hearts, she performs the entirety of her remarkable album in sequential order, as well as a trio of unreleased songs neatly placed between what would be ‘side A’ and ‘side B’.

With such a concise setlist, it is hard to pick out moments and the magic of the night can only be recalled in its grand sweep of melody and feeling. Some songs stand out, of course. The crowd-favourite ‘The Waltz of Winter Hey’. The tender ‘That’s What Falling in Love Will Do’. The new songs which tantalise us with evidence that Toria’s incipient flight may prove to be broad and lasting. And then there’s the stunning and mature ‘See Things Through’, a song that burns slowly and doesn’t seem like it’s going to knock you over until you realise you’re already on your arse.

In between songs, Toria morphs from ethereal song-bride into pure Lancashire lass, grinning and telling deliberately crap jokes and connecting with people in the crowd over the Susan Hill novel The Woman in Black, which inspired her ‘House on the Hill’ song tonight. While on paper such things may seem to risk dispelling the delicate, haunting tone of Toria’s music, in reality it does not. Such moments earth her, allow us to recognise her as genuine, and make it all the more remarkable when after a laugh she picks on the strings of her guitar again and casts another spell.

There is a sense of everything being correct, of this being one of those nights of live music where everything falls into place and it is remembered: the pure, soaring voice which seems to have carried down from the Wilderswood moor; the confident folk picking on Toria’s acoustic guitar; the times when Polly’s cello bursts with a violently beautiful sound at the optimal moment of a song’s release, as in ‘The Flood’ – a concoction of timing and beauty and flowering expression that together makes the experience as a whole truly special.

It is Toria’s biggest gig of the tour, and while the 60-plus people who have filled the Yes Basement may not seem like a large number in the scheme of things, the enthusiasm and the energy of the fans here – and the same from Toria in response – have made it seem like 600. The basement has heaved like a living thing, and while Great Hand himself may not be here to silence the music, when Toria chooses to end it herself she receives her own great hand of applause. As the crowd slowly filters out, I think of us as pipers who, having descended, have heard such music in the dark that we have no wish to return to the surface. But in the dissipating magic of the basement, I morph reluctantly from the piper into the dog who is marked by his experience. I walk up the stairs and out onto Charles Street, a light rain falling in the night to soothe my singed skin.

Setlist:

(all songs from the album Toria Wooff and written by Toria Wooff, unless noted)

  1. The Plough
  2. Lefty’s Motel Room
  3. Song for A
  4. Sweet William
  5. Mountains
  6. Black Shuck (unreleased)
  7. House on the Hill (unreleased)
  8. Good Mother (unreleased)
  9. The Flood
  10. Author Song
  11. The Waltz of Winter Hey
  12. That’s What Falling in Love Will Do
  13. See Things Through
  14. Estuaries

My other concert reviews can be found here.

My other writing, such as my novel Void Station One, can be found here.