On Saturday night, Lanterns on the Lake took to the stage at the Sage Gateshead to perform the year’s first and only live version of their latest album, ‘Spook the Heard’.

With plans for the show originally to be performed to a safe, socially distanced audience, disrupted by the announcement of a second lockdown, the decision was made to livestream the concert to the sage website for an audience at home. “It feels really strange and silly to say hello to an empty room, but I’m ‘gonna do it anyway”, stated Hazel Wilde, lead singer of the band, following the two opening songs of the album, ‘When It All Comes True’ and ‘Baddies’. This statement perfectly captures how, despite this new virtual home for live music becoming the new normal for both audiences and performers, it still contains a strangeness and unfamiliarity, yet it is a strangeness and unfamiliarity that is worth enduring for the spirt and support of live music in this time.

The band continues with ‘Every Atom’. The most striking moments of this song were the blended violin and guitar melodic passages from verse to chorus, which rang effortlessly and brilliantly more than true to the recorded version of the song. These moments of this song resonated through the empty music hall and out of our screens at home, creating a moment of individualised and united breathless gasps of wonder. Following every atom came ‘Blue Screen Beams’, a song that, combined with powerfully political lyrical content such as the discussion of “scrolling screens” and the redundance of walls, with the timing of the performance in line with the presidential election, asserted more prominence than ever, which was only amplified by the nature and passion of this live performance.

Relevance and prominence quickly became a key theme of this performance. With lyrics such as “its been a strange year and funny old night” in the song ‘Before They Excavate’ which features isolated segments of almost silence that seemed to echo through the loneliness of the venue that evening to the audiences at home and to the many of 2020.This song continued to set the slowed down and often haunting tone of the next two songs performed, ‘Swimming lessons’ and the heartbreakingly stunning, ‘Secrets and medicine’. Before concluding the show, Wilde stated, “Hopefully we will get to play these songs live for you one day”, this message of hope continued to follow into the rest of the performance. As Wilde sang the lyrics “what a fitting ending oh what a perfect scene”, it became apparent upon reflection that this was, in fact a bittersweet, perfect scene of unity between music and its fans.