Scout Niblett

Unconventional and peculiar, Scout Niblett thrills a tiny venue with her secretive presence.

Looking frumpier than I would have imagined, Scout makes her way from the crowd to the stage unnoticed, where she fiddles around setting up, as if she’d forgotten she was playing a show tonight and had just been woken from deep slumber. She seems disorientated, and mutters into her microphone to the sound tech troubles about her guitar. Scout Niblett can’t get a sound out of it. It’s almost embarrassing to watch, but absolutely curious.

She finally sorts things out, and so begins the dark folk adventure of a Scout Niblett show. She opens unceremoniously with “Dinosaur Egg”, the first track off her newly released EP, which to be honest is quite disturbing. With lyrics that seem much sillier than the type of thing Scout would usually come up with, she sings woefully about an unhatched dinosaur egg, and gently warns that she’ll ‘scare the shit out of you’. True say.

She’s like a fucked up dark Joanna Newsom: Scout seems to play in the goblins lair rather than with the fairies. Her songs are bizarre and minimal, and her performance is harrowing. Having only heard her on record before, I found that live she was a touch more soulful and warmer, everything seemed to make sense when she’s there in front of you. The intimate venue brought the crowd flocking shyly towards her, whilst her drummer occasionally accompanied her (and what a beast of a drummer he was); and at times Scout herself would take the drums, guitar on lap, singing into a mic to the side of the kit.

Scout is awkward to watch, you feel like you shouldn’t really be looking, especially when she skips up nervously for the encore, as if she wasn’t really expecting to be liked; plays one song, before rushing off shaking her hand in front of her to say ‘no more’.

By Felix