Tag: toria wooff

Wednesday 17th December 2025

Gullivers, Manchester, England

“Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?”

Robert Burns, ‘Auld Lang Syne’

“And you ask: will I write, with you firmly in my mind?”

Toria Wooff, ‘Song for A’

The night begins with a ghost story. As the lights dim to deep shadow in the small, close ballroom above Gullivers bar in Manchester, precise, unhurried footsteps rap against the wooden floor. The Librarian of Weeping Bank is walking down the aisle between the rows of the hushed audience towards the stage. With his long, beak-like nose and distinguished hairline, dressed conservatively in a sweater vest with a large, leather-bound ledger tucked under his arm, the Librarian certainly looks the part, like a teacher or lecturer straight out of central casting. He takes a seat, opens the ledger and begins to read.

It’s all a wonderful bit of theatre as, over the next half-hour, this curator of the stories of Weeping Bank Library delivers one of those stories with the assurance of a thespian. The performance is a well-balanced one, with tasteful sound effects accompanying the Librarian’s tale; nothing excessive or cinematic, merely the occasional footstep, breath of howling wind or creaking floorboard to accentuate the mood.

For those of us seated in the front row, the shuffling of the audience behind adds even more, for it feels as though something may well be creeping up behind us. This is the Gothic style in full effect; using mood and ambience and vocabulary to ratchet up the tension of the ghost story itself – that of a babysitter who is left alone with a child in a house on the wrong side of the Weeping Bank. Or has she, as she perhaps discovers, been left alone with two?

It’s an unconventional way to begin a night of live music, but one thing (among many) that I have come to admire in a Toria Wooff concert is their singular nature. Tonight is the fifth time I’ve seen Toria live since I came across her remarkable debut album back in May, and on each occasion different songs have come to the fore and made their impression upon the night. It could be that the folk melody of ‘The Waltz of Winter Hey’ grabs you; on another night it might be the soaring vulnerability of ‘See Things Through’ or ‘Lefty’s Motel Room’ which stand as the centrepiece. To see someone live five times in eight months and still find new things to uncover on each occasion is testament to both the stable of songs and the creative momentum the artist is quietly building.

And tonight is, in many ways, the most impressive Toria Wooff performance yet. Almost a year to the day since her first billed ‘Somewhat Gothic Christmas’, at a venue within spitting distance on the other side of the road, Toria pulls out all the stops to ensure there are no lumps of coal in our stockings this year; that this will be a night to remember. Many of the finest songs from her album are played impeccably tonight by her and her on-stage companion, the cellist Polly Virr, and we’re also treated to some unreleased songs from her upcoming second album, including the haunting ‘House on the Hill’, a song which takes your breath away with its immaculate, bracing air.

If that were not enough, Toria also proves, later in the night, to be one of the rare musicians who can sing the hell out of a Christmas song. There’s something about the festive period that encourages ghost stories, whether that’s the long, cold winter nights or the Victorian shadow of many of our present traditions – including the Ghost of Christmas Past from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol – and Toria Wooff’s ethereal Gothic folk stylings are perfectly suited to evoke it. One hopes that her Somewhat Gothic Christmases in years yet to come will prove, by word of mouth, to be a regular and hotly-anticipated fixture on the Manchester calendar. They certainly will be on mine.

After opener Natalie Wildgoose has followed the Librarian by providing a half-dozen haunting, piano-driven laments of her own – a stark, almost avant-garde reimagination of English moorland folk – Toria Wooff takes to the stage carrying her new, custom-made Native Series acoustic guitar, accompanied by Polly and her cello. With her new guitar of English yew, she decides immediately to ring in the new, opening with the unreleased demoniac interlude ‘Black Shuck’ and ‘The Morrigan’, both of which are expected on her upcoming album in 2026.

It’s the first time I’ve heard ‘The Morrigan’, which takes the legend of a mythological Celtic goddess-queen and – ingeniously, as Toria has also done on her unreleased songs ‘House on the Hill’ and ‘The Bargain’ – universalises it. Part of its melody recalls her song ‘The Flood’, but ‘The Morrigan’ is very much its own creature. Polly’s touches on the cello are almost a second voice, a call-and-response with Toria’s own confident, hauntingly clear vocals. “I cannot wait for what she offers,” Toria sings on the unreleased song. Truer words were never spoken.

It’s a bold opening, and Toria follows it up with ‘Estuaries’, a soft, pensive song that I am used to hearing later in her live sets (no doubt due to its lyric “then you leave without saying goodbye”). Its presence here so early in the night not only speaks to the dexterity of her growing catalogue of songs, but also suggests Toria has something special planned for the end of her set.

‘Estuaries’ is followed by ‘Lefty’s Motel Room’, which in its album cut is a full-band, steel-laden number which I’d recommend to new listeners looking for a rewarding dose of folk Americana. Tonight, with Toria’s new custom tonewood accompanied only by Polly’s resonant cello, the song is stark and wounded, and afterwards we’re given some insight into why.

“You’re all very quiet,” Toria says teasingly, in her thick, warm Bolton accent. “There’s something about being seated that makes people quiet, I think.” She tells us that she wrote ‘Lefty’s Motel Room’, and the next two songs she is about to play, about her best friend Alicia. “On the topic of being quiet in this room… erm, we never were.” The crowd chuckles warmly. Gullivers bar, here in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, was “one of our haunts.” She gestures towards the back of the room. “That little, like… where it dips in the little alcove there – we used to stand there because we knew we could get away with being as disruptive as possible.”

Astute readers will notice the past tense, and this isn’t because it’s a mere act of reminiscence on Toria’s part. Alicia is indeed no longer with us, and it’s clear that Toria – who dedicated her self-titled album to her, forever linking their names together – is deeply affected by her loss to cancer five years ago. In light of this, the battling sorrow of ‘Lefty’s Motel Room’ – and other songs to come tonight – becomes even more apparent. “And all the bars that we had haunted,” she sang in ‘Lefty’. “I couldn’t go back even if I tried.”

There follows some of the most delicate, vulnerable moments of the night, as Toria navigates her way through two more songs inspired by Alicia: ‘Sweet William’ (“I remember your skin and how we fed it to the clay”) and ‘Song for A’ (“You call me up, haul me out, say you ain’t got much time left now”). ‘The Waltz of Winter Hey’, the signature song that follows in their wake, may be more recognisable as a ghost story, but it is increasingly clear what ghost lingers in many of Toria’s other songs. When I remarked earlier that different songs come to the fore each time I hear Toria live, well, tonight it is the lyricism which impresses deeply – across every song.

It should be noted, at this point, that Toria Wooff is no maudlin artist. If there is a melancholy to some of her songs, it is a sadness that she has diverted, as one might a river, towards art and creation rather than bitterness and gloom. It is a hurt that inspires rather than kills a buzz. What is more, Toria allows us a release with her easy charm and humour. After another song that must surely be about Alicia, the unreleased ‘Noiselessly’ (“there’s a part of me that died when you did too… I think we’re tangled up together on every plane”), she thanks the audience for their applause. “When you like it,” she says, “it means it makes the album. It doesn’t get cut last minute.” Introducing ‘Aleister’ at this moment, another impressive unreleased song, she begins to tell us what it’s about. But there comes a noise from the back of the room, something heavy dropped on the floor with a thud louder than any of the Weeping Bank Library’s sound effects.“It doesn’t matter actually,” she laughs.

And even were the spectre of her friend not resting quietly on every song, there would still be moments that would mark the night as special. On a normal night, ‘The Flood’, which follows ‘Aleister’, would be a stand-out moment. Enthusiastic applause greets the end of a song which has threatened to burst its banks, with increasingly insistent guitar-picking from Toria and some inspired cello flourishes from Polly.

“Let’s do a poll,” Toria says, as always a warm presence on the stage. “Are you feeling more festive… or spooky?”

“Right, so shout for ‘spooky’.” There are some woos from the audience, and Toria laughs at the hesitancy. “Festive?” she asks, before bursting into laughter at the response. “That was even more hesitant!” she grins.

The ‘spooky’ option having won (for now), Toria and Polly decide to play ‘House on the Hill’, an unreleased song inspired by her “favourite book”, Susan Hill’s 1983 Gothic pastiche The Woman in Black. It’s a truly special song, one of those that just seems perfectly balanced in your mind as you hear it, and it has that feel of being the sort of song that might see this talented artist break out onto higher ground of her own. I’ve taken to referring to Toria as ‘The Woman in Black’ in my previous reviews, something which Toria tells me after the show – as usual, she generously grants her time to fans afterwards – had left her buzzing when she read it.

It’s a moniker that fits her like a glove, and not one I can claim credit for, because it’s one that Toria has earned with her own talent and blossoming creativity – as the unreleased ‘House on the Hill’ has just shown. She has embraced this Gothic folk sound and aesthetic in the last couple of years, to the point where her older material (such as a 2021 single called ‘June’, a 2019 cover of Alice Cooper’s ‘Poison’, the Badlands EP also from 2019) is either hard or outright impossible to find and listen to, even if the music that can still be sourced in some forgotten places, such as the wonderful 2021 single ‘James Edward’, is compelling to hear.

But one cannot blame her for leaving her old music behind – even as she ensures she carries the memory of old friends with her – for this new Woman in Black may well be on the cusp of something special. “We had a big gab about [Susan Hill’s novel] in the green-room,” Toria tells the audience. “And about the 1989 [television] version of it, which is just incredible. And during that chat, I realised the moment that I must have just decided where my path led in life. When I first saw HER stood in the graveyard like that” – she mimes the disturbing, rigid pose of Jennet Humfrye – “I was like: ‘THAT’S who I want to be.’ That’s a great realisation to bring in to 2026,” she laughs.

But before the New Year, and the exciting (“but stressful”) new album release that is sure to come, there is still a Christmas to celebrate – and celebrate somewhat Gothically. ‘House on the Hill’ is followed the effortlessly pleasant chords of ‘That’s What Falling in Love Will Do’. The song is marked by some electrical distortion in the speaker at Toria’s feet, and I find myself wondering if perhaps a mischievous ghost has moved from the alcove to be as disruptive as possible once again in this old haunt.

In support of this theory, the distortion stops as soon as Toria acknowledges it and smiles to Polly, and we move towards the final songs of the night. ‘See Things Through’ is one of Toria’s most remarkable productions, in which she confesses to not knowing whether she’s strong enough to ‘see things through’ even as the strength of the song and the soaring music proves that she is. The beautiful release of Polly’s cello as the song crescendos is one of the moments that I’ve come to anticipate each and every time I’ve heard the two musicians live on stage.

“I have one more song for you guys,” Toria says as she takes in the applause. “And it’s a very important song to me. When I was trying to pick a festive Christmas song, I really wanted to think about something that encapsulated what the true meaning of Christmas is. The most important thing about Christmas. And that is: The Muppets.”

The audience laughs as Toria moves to a black metal lectern at the side of the stage and shuffles through a flurry of sheet music. Her eyes light up as she finds what she’s looking for. She picks up the lectern – “Very precarious” – and places it in front of her at centre stage.

“OK. So this is genuinely what I think is the best Christmas song ever written. Maybe the best song ever written, actually.

“And it’s sung by Michael Caine, in his finest role. It’s called ‘Thankful Heart’. And there’s a little call-and-response. If you do know it, feel free to join in.”

What follows is a sweet and gentle rendition of the Muppets song, with Toria’s voice the purest I’ve ever heard it, innocent and childlike while deftly avoiding even the hint of twee or festive syrup. Polly smiles warmly, her cello itself almost a call-and-response to Toria’s singing. As absurd as it may sound to anyone who is not here to experience it, Toria is not wrong in believing this captures the spirit of Christmas. Her breathless melody “with a thankful heart” reminds everyone in the room of the warmth of the winter season, a glow that comes from sharing life with other people that we all accepted intuitively as children but forget as we grow older. This serene joy does not banish or conquer the sadness which Toria has acknowledged in other songs tonight, but instead shows how light can exist alongside darkness; how they are not even two sides of the same coin but exist in one permeable area, like rain falling into the ocean, and only by embracing both can you find a way forward. Toria can sing of her loss and her pain even as she can sing, now, of “how precious life can be” and how “even if we part, I will hold you close with a thankful heart.”

The audience, hushed throughout, breaks into deserved applause at the song’s end. The applause continues as Toria leaves the stage and morphs into shouts for an encore. Toria obligingly returns to rejoin Polly and jokes, “We’re going to do the whole of The Muppets. I’ll be Michael Caine.”

Instead, she shuffles through the sheet music again and places a piece of paper on the lectern. “Right, ok. We’re going to do a little singalong. It’s not going to be fun and cheery – it’s a Robert Burns poem. I think it’s actually a funeral song. And it’s technically not a Christmas song either – it’s a New Year’s song. So have a little sing together. You guys can sing the chorus with me.”

What follows stuns those of us in the audience so much that we all forget to sing along. ‘Auld Lang Syne’ is a song so ubiquitous at this time of year that we can often forget the latent power of it – but not tonight. On a night of timeless folk music penned almost exclusively by herself, this is the perfect capstone: Toria Wooff playing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ as though it were written just yesterday, pulled from fresh soil.

Toria’s own heartache and loss finds expression in the song, and when she sings “And surely you will buy a pint, and surely I’ll buy mine; We’ll take a cup of kindness yet, for auld lang syne”, we know whose name puts power behind it. In ‘Thankful Heart’, Toria sang of how “if you need to know the measure of a man, you simply count his friends,” but in ‘Auld Lang Syne’ she shows that friendship is not measured only in number but in depth, and if Alicia experienced this quality of friendship and love from such a remarkable artist, she must have been a blessèd lady indeed, for all her woe.

Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? I debate whether I should even write any of this, for it is not my story to share. But I have witnessed an artist with emotional bravery tonight, and at moments, watching her closely on the stage, it has been as though Toria might waver, that the gestures to the alcove at the back of the room, or ‘Song for A’ and ‘Sweet William’ reverberating from the walls of their old haunt, might be too much to bear.

But her performance tonight, her decision to turn pain and loss into art and beauty, is worth noting for posterity. For Toria seems to know – intuitively, if not consciously – that the ghost story she carries along with her is not a curse. In true Gothic fashion, the darkness is a harbour; not only a place of shelter for the memories of Christmas Past but a place for the Ghosts of Christmases Yet to Come to gather and find their path forward.

Toria’s performance tonight is not merely admirable, but the epitome of true artistic expression: to roll back Death, even while inviting one’s ghosts inside and making peace with them. This Woman in Black bears her loss far less malevolently than the one of Susan Hill’s creation, choosing instead to respond to hardship with life and increasingly impressive art – sweet Williams planted in black and tilled soil.

Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind? Tonight, Toria Wooff has given Rabbie Burns’ rhetorical question a definitive answer.

Setlist:

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

1. Black Shuck (unreleased)
2. The Morrigan (unreleased)
3. Estuaries
4. Lefty’s Motel Room
5. Sweet William
6. Song for A
7. The Waltz of Winter Hey
8. Noiselessly (unreleased)
9. Aleister (unreleased)
10. The Flood
11. House on the Hill (unreleased)
12. That’s What Falling in Love Will Do
13. See Things Through
14. Thankful Heart (Paul Williams) (unreleased)
15. Encore: Auld Lang Syne (Robert Burns/Traditional) (unreleased)

My other concert reviews can be found here.

My fiction writing can be found here.

Sunday 19th October 2025

St. Mary’s Creative Space, Chester, England

“Horatio says ’tis but our fantasy,

And will not let belief take hold of him

Touching this dreaded sight twice seen of us.

Therefore I have entreated him along

With us to watch the minutes of this night,

That if again this apparition come,

He may approve our eyes and speak to it.”

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, HAMLET, ACT 1, SCENE 1, 23-29

So says the sentinel Marcellus in the opening scene of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, as he brings Horatio to the battlements of Elsinore to verify the sighting of the Ghost in armour which is shortly to appear. His fellow guard Barnardo supports him in the face of Horatio’s scepticism, imploring the lord to “sit down awhile, And let us once again assail your ears” with what they have these last two nights seen.

An odd way to begin a review of a live gig in 2025, to be sure, but as I exit my dew-drenched car on an appropriately ghostly and silent night and walk across the courtyard to the top of St. Mary’s Hill, just within the city walls of Chester, I know that I am at risk of merely repeating myself if I were to relate only a stolid narrative of this night of music. It is the fourth time I’ve seen Toria Wooff live in just five months and, having written reviews of those previous concerts in Manchester, Liverpool and Bury, I know exactly what to expect from where I see the church tower manifest in the autumn dark. As I pass under the welcoming porchlight of the church of St. Mary, I know I’ll be once again hearing the remarkable music of Toria Wooff and Polly Virr. What I write, therefore, is less a review than an imploration for others to follow me in doing the same.

In many ways, Toria Wooff under the arches of the church tonight provides the quintessential experience of her music; a distillation of everything that I have found appealing in her sound since first hearing her album in May and then hearing it again live from a basement in Manchester just a couple of weeks later. I knew then what has been confirmed in the live experiences since; that this was a singer-songwriter of real talent, able to back up a singing voice that is alternately haunting, tender and powerful with songwriting of real originality, dexterity and craft.

And tonight the setlist (which Toria autographs for me at the end – a genuine friendliness when meeting fans being another hallmark of her live shows) is the strongest I’ve seen. She plays all but one of the songs from her self-titled debut album, which is an excellent record, but also provides six unreleased songs which – I would imagine – will be there on the second album. When that album comes – Toria says tonight it is currently in the tracking stage – it will be, if tonight’s performances are any confirmation, as successful an artistic expression as the first.

Indeed, the first song Toria plays tonight when she takes the stage is one of those unreleased numbers. ‘The Bargain’ is a subtle song that cleverly recasts the plight of a woman who risks being controlled by a charming man into something akin to a deal made with the Devil – who, of course, always approaches with fair words and appearance that hides his true self.

The church is the finest setting in which to hear the song. While St. Mary’s on the Hill hasn’t been used for worship in more than fifty years, it still retains deep in its stones that grandeur and quiet communal awe that all old churches possess. After I enter, I take a look around the nave before finding an empty seat in the front row. We’re surrounded by black curtains along the arcades and in front of the apse, but I can sit back and look up to see striking carved bosses in the camber beam roof. The building itself is older than the words of the Bard that I quoted at the start of this review, and the three witches supposedly buried in the grounds would perhaps be pleased to find a kinswoman standing confidently in the chancel tonight. Toria Wooff is a self-professed Goth, and tonight she’s dressed in a long black dress, with black boots and black hair and blood-red lips, a Taylor acoustic guitar resting across her body. Polly Virr, who takes a seat beside her and rests her cello against her neck, is also dressed all in black.

In fact, the only performer who doesn’t bedeck themselves in black tonight is opening act Sam Moss, who steps out in troubadour colours of olive and weathered grey. He delivers a fine acoustic set in a soft, soulful voice, the Boston-based musician’s songs sounding like Walden set to chords. After delivering seven songs he departs for another gig he has across town.

He’s succeeded by David Gorman, Toria’s regular opener on this autumn tour, who is dressed all in black in gothic solidarity with his headliner. He provides a slightly longer and even more successful set, including his latest single ‘Darlin’ and two new songs, ‘Hourglass’ and ‘Morning’. (“Although I appreciate all my songs are new to you,” he says to the audience.) Alongside an incongruous but successful cover of Blink-182’s ‘All the Small Things’, there are the apposite songs ‘Curses’, ‘La Mort’ and ‘Another Midnight’ – all of which ensure I’ll be looking into this musician further. That is, if we all make it: both Sam and David sing lyrics tonight that make reference to apocalypse or the end of the world, and I find myself thinking that perhaps they know something we don’t, and that I should take the opportunity to make things right with the Lord before I leave this church.

But if there’s rapture tonight, it’s Toria who’s causing it. After ‘The Bargain’ I already know I made the right decision in coming here. I had been at a crossroads of my own, knowing that in driving to Chester to make the gig I would be missing most of Manchester United’s visit to Anfield – the Red Devils being one form of devil worship that’s socially acceptable. In the event it’s a historic 2-1 win (not that you care, of course), but even though I miss it I don’t regret my decision. It’s Toria’s set which provides the best 90 minutes tonight.

Having played the first song solo, Toria is now joined by Polly Virr for the remainder of the night. Polly is Toria’s not-so-secret weapon; a cello is one of the most exquisite sounds you could ever hope to hear and Polly plays it expertly. She adds a gorgeous texture to Toria’s already-compelling songs, complementing her soaring voice well. She applies deft touches and moments of sweeping power, whether that’s a pensive delicacy on ‘Sweet William’, deep-toned plucking on ‘The Flood’, the drive behind ‘The Waltz of Winter Hey’, or the cathartic release of ‘See Things Through’ in tonight’s encore.

On the second song of the set, ‘Lefty’s Motel Room’, Polly substitutes the fine steel guitar of the album version with her cello. The song’s one of Toria’s best and most accessible, a showcase for her vocals and her songwriting. Its steel-laden album cut is a good entry point for fans of alternative country and Americana into her music.

But it’s with the third song, ‘Song for A’, that the night in Chester begins to distinguish itself from my previous experiences of Toria Wooff live. Maybe it’s just an effect of the travelling – Toria’s more than halfway through a nine-day nationwide tour, and played two hundred miles away in London the night before – but I detect an air of melancholy in some of the songs tonight, stronger than I’ve felt them before. ‘Song for A’, a tribute to a lost but not forgotten friend, has this quality anyway, but when I hear ‘Good Mother’ later in the night it’s the first time I’ve really been hit by the full scope of the sadness in the song. “I could have been a good mother, if that’s the card I was dealt,” Toria sings.

The melancholy doesn’t affect her playing or her voice – the latter is the purest I’ve yet heard it – and nor does it dampen the warm humour always present in her set. Toria mentions how she recently introduced Polly by saying she played the violin. As Polly looks up smiling from behind what is definitely not a violin, Toria says her cello is either “a massive violin, or she’s really small.” She also later delivers a disarming anecdote about embarrassing herself by miming a walk down a staircase at a previous gig, after David Gorman had gestured to her at the merchandise table during his opening set. “I doubled down and did it again,” she groans. “So now I mention my own merch. It shocked me into compliance.”

‘Good Mother’ is one of six unreleased songs Toria plays for us tonight, including the afore-mentioned ‘The Bargain’ and ‘Black Shuck’, a short “interlude” about a “cool as fuck” medieval story of a red-eyed demon dog which broke into a church. Toria is on home turf tonight; while she was born in Horwich, near Bolton (“if I want to be romantic, I say I’m from just off the West Pennine Moors,” she tells the amused audience), she has made Chester her home. And where better to bring new material to an audience than the same city where you are currently recording it?

With that in mind, Toria plays a new song she says she’s never played before. Marked on the setlist as ‘Noiselessly’ (Toria doesn’t introduce it by name tonight), it’s the latest evidence that this Northern songstress is quietly building a strong body of work that deserves to begin causing a stir. “Light up your mind,” she sings, the music rising as it finds a new chord.

It’s immediately followed by another unreleased original, ‘Aleister’. Even before I saw the name spelt on the setlist after the show, I suspected this song was inspired by the occultist Aleister Crowley, for not only is Toria a proud Goth girl but an avid Led Zeppelin fan. It’s a thrilling folk song, one of those confident melodies where the lyrics land emphatically on the chords like boots on stairs. Toria’s eyes scan the crowd as she confidently sings ‘Aleister’ from the chancel of St. Mary’s Church. It would be far too fanciful to suggest her eyes alight on me in the front row when she sings of “bored housewives summoning Archangel Michael”, but it’s a cool moment regardless.

But by far the most notable unreleased song Toria plays tonight is one she says has “been part of my set for a little while” already. And I can attest to that, having heard it on each of the three previous occasions I’ve heard her live. Despite its familiarity to me now, I still get goosebumps when I hear her high, haunting voice on ‘House on the Hill’, a song she says is inspired by the imagery in Susan Hill’s novel The Woman in Black: “the descriptions of the marshland and the desolate house… it’s frightening, but beautifully worded.” The song sung by the Woman in Black on stage tonight gets better every time I hear it, as though ‘House on the Hill’ finds more invigorating breath to draw upon here in St. Mary’s on the Hill.

It says a lot for the musical wealth on display that I feel I can relate much of the power and magic of the concert tonight without really mentioning two of Toria’s most popular songs, ‘See Things Through’ and ‘The Waltz of Winter Hey’, both of which she plays. But, as I wrote earlier, this is less a review than an imploration, and there is little I can do other than to encourage you to go listen to them yourself, whether on the impressive album recording or live at one of Toria’s gigs.

Because if you are in England, and particularly if you are in the North, there will be plenty of opportunities to see her live. Toria tours frequently and, as mentioned, she is already well on her way with recording a second album – a half-dozen dark jewels of which we’ve been privileged to hear tonight. If it’s a sad fact that talent is so scarcely rewarded in our society – and Toria has plenty of talent – it is at least true that hard work and industry sometimes is.

Bells tolled as I approached the church tonight; they will toll again through the fog as I leave. In between there is remarkable music, and I can only hope that one day bells toll to announce a Gothic revival, the wider recognition of Toria Wooff’s artistic talent. As it stands, despite repeatedly telling my friends not to sleep on this, it is alone that I make my way back to Manchester for the working week, a mist travelling across the black road as I cross the latent River Dee. Sometimes you can’t even bring a horse to water, let alone make it drink.

I write this review a week later in the dead of night, on the night the clocks go back for the coming winter. As I see the time change from 2 a.m. to 1 a.m., the above quote from Hamlet comes to mind. Thinking back on the lighted porch of St. Mary’s Church before doors, I remember reading once about a folk superstition from Tudor times. It was believed that if you kept a watch on the porch of your parish church throughout the night, you would begin to see the spirits of the living people of your parish entering its doors. Those who you did not see come out again would die before midsummer.

But beware this gift of augury, which came with a price: it was also said that if you failed in your vigil and fell asleep, you too would die. For the final song of her encore tonight, Toria Wooff plays ‘Estuaries’ softly, almost like a lullaby. But this is no time for sleep. Like the vigilant guards of Hamlet‘s opening scene, I have already borne witness to the event, and now await the next opportunity. Four times have I seen the Woman in Black live and had her song greet my ears. Others have too, and the number deserves to grow. Do not sleep on this any longer. Take a pew, and watch with us the minutes of this night.

Setlist:

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

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

My other concert reviews can be found here.

My fiction writing can be found here.

Sunday 5th October 2025

Derby Hall, The Met, Bury, England

“It’s not often you get to see one of your favourite artists backed by an orchestra,” opener Carl North says from the stage tonight. “And for free, too.”

With this one utterance Carl makes my own review redundant, because this is the appeal of the night in a nutshell. Toria Wooff has become one of my favourite artists in the half-year since I first came across her music and heard her play in a packed basement in Manchester, delivering an evocative Gothic folk sound with sophisticated songwriting and powerfully clear vocals. And tonight she’s not only backed by four members of the Manchester Camerata as a string quartet, but it’s free entry too – part of the Camerata’s charity-driven celebration of music across the ten boroughs of Greater Manchester.

Tonight is the third time I’ve seen Toria live in the six months since I first discovered her music, with a fourth soon to come as she embarks upon an autumn tour in the next couple of weeks. That fourth will make her joint-top of the list of artists I’ve seen live (with Kassi Valazza). Having written reviews of her Manchester and Liverpool gigs in so short a span of time, is there anything new I could say a third time around? Would it be best, perhaps, to just leave the night with Carl’s succinct summary?

In one sense, no – I can’t say anything new. Toria is as good as ever – strong in voice, picking out melodies on her acoustic guitar, and after the show devoting her time to those who wish to meet and speak with her. But in another sense, the presence of the Manchester Camerata on this unique night gives me a new perspective, an opportunity to reflect on the talent and achievements of this artist.

Not all songs would stand up to the scrutiny of a classical rearrangement, but Toria’s do, which speaks to the quality of her songwriting. The bones are strong, and in the capable hands of Polly Virr, one of Toria’s regular collaborators, who has reworked their arrangement for the camerata tonight, they remain as impressive as ever. Toria’s self-titled debut album is played in full tonight, and in the same sequential order. The balance, the flow of the music, is excellent, giving us an opportunity to doff our cap to James Wyatt, Toria’s partner who produced that exquisite album at Sloe Flower Studios.

One thing that’s clear is that Toria has chosen her collaborators well, not only Polly and James but Carl North, her friend who opens the night with his own acoustic guitar and deeply soulful voice. His original songs, including ‘Hard Times’, ‘Thorn in Your Side’ and ‘Pearl’, are able to stand tall alongside his covers of Hank Williams, Jerry Reed and, as the last song in his set, the Bob Dylan song ‘Corrina, Corrina’.

And, of course, there are the members of the Camerata itself, one of whom (Katie Foster) played on Toria’s album too. Tonight’s string quartet consists of Sarah Whittingham, Katie Foster, Alex Mitchell and Graham Morris (the latter on cello) and, with Polly Virr watching on from the audience, they bring an orchestral magnificence to Toria’s songs, whether that’s the pensive roaming of ‘Lefty’s Motel Room’, the thoughtful rumination in ‘Sweet William’, the dreaminess of ‘Mountains’ or the soaring catharsis of ‘See Things Through’. They bring out the haunting depth of ‘The Waltz of Winter Hey’ and conjure a sound like rustling autumn leaves on ‘Estuaries’. Falling glissandos from the cello add an element of danger to ‘The Flood’, the swelling music drawing deep smiles from the quartet. There are few better harmonies of sight and sound than an orchestra swaying as they move across their strings.

The smiles are even warmer on their faces at the end of the show, as Toria leaves the stage and they remain seated, looking in her direction as the audience cheers for an encore.

“I genuinely didn’t have anything prepared,” Toria says after she returns to the stage in her long black dress and lifts the strap of her acoustic guitar back onto her shoulder. She decides to treat us to a new song, telling us she’s finished writing her second album and it’s currently in tracking. The song was written while she was reading the Gothic horror novel The Woman in Black, and “this song is loosely attached to that”.

‘House on the Hill’ is the song in question, and if tonight has been an impressive recreation of her first album, ‘House on the Hill’ shows that Toria’s second is to be eagerly anticipated. You can hear a pin drop as her clear voice fills the hall with one of those memorable folk melodies she has proven to be so good at creating. The song is played solo by Toria on her guitar: an unprepared encore, no arrangement from Polly, the four members of the Camerata now just four more additions to an admiring audience of hundreds at the Derby Hall. It’s not the free entry that appeals. It’s not the orchestra that keeps us fixed in place, remarkable as they are. The draw remains the woman in black, Toria herself.

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. The Flood
7. Author Song
8. The Waltz of Winter Hey
9. That’s What Falling in Love Will Do
10. See Things Through
11. Estuaries
12. Encore: House on the Hill (unreleased)

My other concert reviews can be found here.

My fiction writing can be found here.

Saturday 26th July 2025

The Nordic Church, Liverpool, England

I’ve been blessed to experience many fine concerts, from stadia hosting legends such as Paul McCartney and Nick Cave to the likes of Kassi Valazza singing a Neil Young song in a bakery in York or her own remarkable songbook in churches of her own. But no concert has been so unique as this warm, bright Saturday evening in Liverpool, hearing Toria Wooff’s voice soar in the Nordic Church.

The Gustav Adolfs Kyrka is an impressive sight as you approach. It is a Swedish stave church, a rarity outside Scandinavia, though built out of familiar British redbrick. While its tall greyed spire is dwarfed by the more recent tower-block developments that encroach upon it along Liverpool’s waterfront, the church dominates the sky and steals the heart in a way those more soulless buildings never could.

By English standards the church is young; built in 1884 for itinerant Norse sailors and emigrants on their way to America, you enter under the black-and-gold sign that names this ‘Skandinaviska sjömanskyrkan’ (Scandinavian Seaman’s Church) and walk up two flights of narrow stairs to enter the nave. Unlike the conventional rectangular shape found in a typical English church, the nave of the Nordic Church is an eye-catching octagonal lantern shape. Bride-white walls host Gothic lancet windows through which the sun pours as I take my seat on an empty pew in the front row. I gaze up at the roof high above. More learned eyes than mine would be able to draw out the nuances of the kyrka‘s architecture, but I know enough to recognise the Gothic Revival elements both inside and outside the church.

This, perhaps, is why Toria Wooff has chosen the venue to host her night of music. Wearing a long black dress and black boots to match her jet-black hair, this self-professed Goth is undergoing a Gothic Revival of her own. In March she released her self-titled debut album, a powerful, nuanced collection of self-penned folk songs with tasteful touches of country and Americana. In May I saw her live in a packed basement in Manchester as part of her successful album tour and, after tonight, I will surely see her again in the autumn, for she reveals to the audience in the Nordic Church that she will be touring again in October. In the meantime, she is busy recording and tracking her next album with James Wyatt, her partner and producer, and we’re treated to five unreleased songs in the setlist tonight.

There’s no opening act; instead, Toria performs two sets with an intermission, during which she mingles with the audience. She does not perform alone: as on her earlier album tour, Toria’s voice and acoustic guitar are supported by Polly Virr, who seats the endpin of her cello into a strap extending from the leg of her chair. Unlike in Manchester, where my view of Polly was obscured, tonight I’m able to not only hear but see her cello’s vibrato and tasteful glissandos complement Toria’s songs. The luxurious sound of the cello has never felt so essential.

Appropriately enough, the opening song in this singular church is ‘The Bargain’, an unreleased song that seems to be about a deal made with the devil (“he appeared in trusted clothes, cuffed and collared around his throat”) that also doubles brilliantly as a song about an independent woman who risks being ensnared by a controlling man (“the only thing I ask you to be: a doting mother, a wife to me”). It’s a fine introduction to Toria’s sound: a powerfully-sung, intelligent song with a timeless folk melody.

‘The Bargain’ is one that Toria has picked alone on her guitar, but Polly now joins for a flurry of songs from the album; ‘Lefty’s Motel Room’, ‘Song for A’ and ‘Sweet William’, her cello sounding particularly fine on the latter song. Toria then goes solo again for ‘Mountains’. This was one of the first songs of hers that really grabbed my attention, and while, like ‘Lefty’ before it, the subtle country touches of the recorded version are missing from the live duo of guitar and cello, it still resonates from the eight walls of the Nordic chamber.

Many artists are diminished by having their songs stripped back. Toria Wooff’s songs, by contrast, feel like they could bloom in arid desert. There’s a strength to her songwriting that allows for flexibility, and the songs work just as well on stage with Polly’s cello as they do with the more textured soundscape James Wyatt helps provide on vinyl. Quite by chance, and without fanfare, I have in the North of England stumbled across one of the more impressive young songwriters I’ve had the privilege to hear live. Toria proves it further with a series of unreleased songs to end her first set: ‘House on the Hill’, inspired by Susan Hill’s Gothic novel The Woman in Black, is a future fan-favourite, while ‘Good Mother’ showcases her gift for melody. The closer, ‘Battering Ram’, is one Toria says she has never played live before. Picked softly and sung gently as a folk song, it fits my above thesis about the songs’ flexibility to a tee: I could easily imagine it being recorded as heavy metal.

‘Battering Ram’ is met with applause – as, deservedly, has every song before it. In contrast to the gig I witnessed in the basement in Manchester a couple of months ago, where Toria told jokes and anecdotes to a heaving crowd, each round of applause tonight has been met with an almost shy thank-you from the lady at the mike.

It’s almost certainly due to the nature of the venue: a sacrosanct church with an audience lined in pews implicitly demands a more consciously demure approach than the rowdy crowd who backed into that dark Manchester basement. Certainly, during the intermission Toria is as bright and outgoing as ever.

She greets me with a hug and is pleased I came; she had placed me on the guest list tonight as a token of gratitude for purchasing one of her canvases recently. (She’s a talented painter as well as a singer-songwriter. As for me, it feels good to be an art patron, like I’m a 16th-century Italian count.) Toria signs a concert poster for me, as does James. (“Some people care about the producer,” he teases her.) She glides around the room and smiles and chats, offering her attention to anyone who wishes for it. As I return to the front row, a corgi pokes its nose out from under the pew, roaming around in search of pats and rubs. It’s a good night.

As Toria and Polly return to the stage for their second set, the stagelights brighten due to the slowly failing light outside. Perhaps inspired by the intermission’s canine concierge, Toria opens with ‘Black Shuck’, which she says is about “the demon dog of East Anglia… and what the dog did in a church in the 1500s”. I check under my pew to make sure the corgi hasn’t also been doing things in a church. Jokes aside, ‘Black Shuck’ is a fine song, as yet unreleased, with another bona fide English folk melody from Toria.

Now comes ‘The Flood’, a highlight of the night as it looks like both Toria and Polly particularly enjoy playing this one. The picking required on Toria’s guitar seems to energise her, as do the opportunities the song gives her voice to wail and soar. Polly is given her head too, weaving some cool vibrato flourishes into the performance. After the song ends, Toria is full of praise for Polly Virr from the mike. “She’s so good that in the set before, I actually played a song in the wrong key and didn’t know, and she just ran with it. So that’s why I keep her around.”

To reciprocate, Polly is moved to provide some of the most gorgeous cello sounds of the night, joining Toria’s voice in flight as the two soar on ‘Author Song’ and giving a cinematic through-line to ‘The Waltz of Winter Hey’. The latter is a real testament to Toria’s verisimilitude; she loves ghost stories, she says, and there’s not enough of them in Lancashire, so she decided to make her own. In her poet’s hands, this non-descript street of shopfronts in her hometown of Horwich (there’s an Aldi at one end of Winter Hey Lane, a nail parlour at the other) becomes a potent and foreboding place plagued by jealousy and the returning dead.

After another song, the sweet and simple palate-cleanser ‘That’s What Falling in Love Will Do’, Toria thanks the venue promoters, Mike Phoenix and Jon Edwards, for making the night happen (“they have such a good ethos with musicians”). At the end of the show, they will hold a raffle and hand out chocolates and wine to the winners, but in truth we’re all winners tonight. The venue, the seating, the audience and, of course, the music, have all been top drawer. My own ethos is never to seek out an artist before or after the show unless it happens naturally, and tonight it happens naturally. At the end of the night, I get another hug from Toria after she signs my setlist – another welcome surprise, for usually these sheets are swiped by fans before the artists’ footsteps have even finished echoing from the stage. But I stand around at the front to see if anyone else wants to take it before I do. No one does, and a beaming Toria is only too happy to sign it for me.

But before that time comes, Toria and Polly are still on stage, and they are yet to provide their finest moment. ‘See Things Through’ starts with Toria alone on her guitar. About a minute in, Polly comes in with that rich and resonant cello sound we’ve been so blessed with tonight. It’s an excellent song, one of those that indisputably deserves a wider audience. It’s sung with both vulnerability and remarkable power by an almost transcendent Toria Wooff; that chiaroscuro effect this lady in black in a white church is able to capture so impressively.

The song builds to its epic finale, Toria’s voice and Polly’s strings soaring in unison and falling in release. The applause which has greeted every song’s end tonight bursts spontaneously into roars for an encore. The duo oblige, with a gentle and calming rendition of ‘Estuaries’ to end the night. They are presented with garlands of flowers by Mike and Jon, and I grin as a sheepish James Wyatt is also called to the stage to take a deserved round of applause for his role in this music.

“You leave without saying goodbye,” Toria sang in that final song, and as an invited guest I determine not to slip out quietly into the night as I normally do at concerts. Toria signs the setlist for me, as I mentioned, but I’m also moved to thank her for the invitation and promising that I’ll certainly be coming to many more nights like this to witness her talent. I’m able to thank Polly too, and we talk about the night in Manchester. James is in a back-room somewhere, so as Toria walks past I touch her gently on the arm and ask her to say goodbye to him for me. It feels silly as I do so, and yet also natural; the warm welcome they have extended to me makes this moment feel like one of those gatherings of friends where you part and know you will come again. I descend the stairs to the exit, where Mike and Jon shake the hands of those who leave. I walk down the road on a summer evening that, despite the efforts of tonight’s Gothic revival, refuses to truly darken.

Setlist:

(no opening act; two full sets with intermission after ‘Battering Ram’)

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

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

My other concert reviews can be found here.

My fiction writing can be found here.

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.