A Winged Victory For The Sullen, Cecil Sharp House, London

It’s Blue Monday on a frost-tinted London evening. I’m standing outside Cecil Sharp House. Waiting. Through a window I can see couples ballroom dancing in the basement. And I am just about to watch a band who made one of the most captivating and affecting albums of last year.

When you write about music you can get away with using phrases, similes and metaphors you would never dream of using in real life. With A Winged Victory For The Sullen this temptation is almost overwhelming. ‘Ethereal’, ‘esoteric’, someone has even described their sound as ‘like bathing your ears in musical honey.’

Tonight they – that is ex-Sparklehorse musician and Stars Of The Lid mainstay Adam Wiltzie and L.A. composer Dustin O’Halloran – put on a show that is deserving of every accolades and piece of hyperbole you can imagine. It’s stunning in every aspect, taking a record that was already very special and pushing it in fresh directions, giving it even more dimensions and texture.

As they take to the stage Adam introduces the set as “7 pieces of music about broken hearts and dead people” (they formed in memory of Sparklehorse frontman Mark Linkous). From then on there are no more words until they end to rapturous applause. Words aren’t needed. The audience watch on in hushed awe.

They play nearly all the album except ‘Minuet For A Cheap Piano Number Two’ and ‘All Farewells Are Sudden’ and finish with a version of Arvo Pärt’s ‘Fratres for Cello And Piano’. Each song is like a moment frozen in time, swelling and unfurling beautifully until it melts away. It’s the type of music that captures the stillness of a sunrise. See, I told you it was hard to not be pretentious.

‘We Played Some Open Chords And Rejoiced, For The Earth Had Circled The Sun Yet Another Year’ (good job there’s no word count on this review), ‘Steep Hills Of Vicodin Tears’ and ‘Requiem For The Static King, Part Two’ are beautiful – quiet and powerful, at times nearly static but still moving. Piano and Wiltzie’s treated guitar merge to form exquisitely forlorn yet hopeful soundscapes.

As they finish the applause lasts for longer than the band seem prepared for and they look genuinely moved. If this is the most depressing day of the year, then I’m hoping for plenty more of them.