The Bundles, Manchester Deaf Institute

Some things are just too good to be true, no matter how much you wish them to be. The Bundles have been performing together off and on for the past 8 years, but this year has seen them finally get together and produce an album. However, that’s as much an indicator of the success of it’s individual parts as much as anything else – the component parts of the band are the key protagonists in the anti-folk scene, meaning the past decade has been a blur of tours and recording for all involved.

Whilst the album is great, where the genre has always been most relevant is on stage, being performed live. Unfortunately, the dream of seeing the band together is shattered one step into the venue, with the walls adorned with an apology – the Icelandic volcano has found yet another victim in the form of Kimya Dawson, unable to fly due to the huge clouds of ash dominating the skies. Jeffrey Lewis has never been a man to let things get in the way of a performance, never mind something as trivial as having a bandmate in another continent. With refunds promised for the few people who decided watching three of the most important musicians in Anti-folk play together, Jeff, his brother Jack and drummer Anders Griffin opened their set.

The amazing thing about Jeffrey Lewis’ career has been the sheer simplicity of his songs, and their ability to go much deeper than the few chords that make them up, a quality clearly brought over into this project. However, being part of a more conventional band set up means that some of the more twee elements of his sound have disappeared, and the lack of Kimya on female lead even more so. Being down to a trio, the workload is shared, with all three members taking on the role that Dawson would usually fulfil and, to be fair, there doesn’t feel like there’s a gap in the sound – to an outsider, this would simply feel like an extremely competent artists putting on a great show.

Whether through a need to apologise – unnecessarily – to the audience for the cancelled flights or due to the excitement of being on tour in such good company, there’s definitely a certain energy to The Bundles as they blitz through an astounding set. The set list even has its own narrative, alternating between tracks from the recent debut and other guest tracks, including a series of three songs documenting a history of ‘supergroups’ (even if, as Jack continually quips, without Dawson The Bundles are simply an ‘okay group) which takes in The Raconteurs ‘Steady as she goes’ as well as tracks by The Traveling Wilburys and the long forgotten Temple of Dog. As well as debuting Jeff’s new comic with ‘The Complete History of the Roman Empire’, they also find time to pay tribute to their missing comrade, doing an impersonation of Wooden Shjips covering ‘Being Cool’.

Though not quite as advertised, even without arguably their star attraction, The Bundles are still an enthralling live band. Towards the end of the set, Jack announces that this might be the band’s only
real tour, which is somewhat of a pity. Hopefully the rapturous applause that bookended their set will get them to think otherwise – and maybe next time they won’t be thwarted by lava flow a few thousand miles away.