Lucy Sissy Miller / Walt McClements, Sy; Gigs, Unitarian Church, Shrewsbury, 16/08/2025.

PROLOGUE

The latest event of Sy: Gigs’ third season featured the double bill of Paris based vocalist, guitarist, songwriter and sound artist Lucy Sissy Miller and from California accordionist, trumpeter, electronic musician, composer and improviser Walt McClements.

Sy; Gigs is the brainchild of series co-ordinator Chris Taylor, who began the project with the aim of bringing genuinely alternative music to Shrewsbury. The Sy: Gigs strand embraces various forms of experimental music with jazz just one of the elements in an eclectic range of events that also incorporates folk, electronica, ambient, New Age, contemporary classical and avant pop / rock It’s a series that is likely to appeal to listeners of such BBC Radio 3 programmes as Late Junction, Unclassified and Night Tracks. Indeed I first heard the music of Walt McClements on one of these, I can’t remember which one now, but it certainly whetted my appetite for tonight’s event.

Taylor has done a terrific job in building a loyal following for his events, which he presents at two Shrewsbury churches, the 100 seat Unitarian Church and the larger St. Alkmund’s Church, which can accommodate 240.

Tonight’s event was held at the Unitarian and was officially sold out, although a few seats remained unoccupied, with many people travelling considerable distances to see the music.

LUCY SISSY MILLER

Lucy Sissy Miller – vocals, acoustic guitar, electronics

Lucy Sissy Miller is an Anglo-French musician based in Paris and travelled to the UK specifically for this event. Her music blends ambient sounds with Americana and much of tonight’s performance featured songs from her latest album recording “Pre Country”, which was released in July 2024 by the Métron record label.

Her previous album “Laepoditia” was released on Marigold Records in 2022.

Miller is influenced by musical artists such as Laurie Anderson and Imogen Heap and by the cinematic imagery of films like David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks” and Wim Wenders’ “Paris, Texas”.

She uses autotune and other electronic devices to manipulate the sound of her voice, and as a result her songs sound variously ethereal, vulnerable and unsettling.

Miller says of the “Pre Country” recording;
“With this album I really enjoyed blurring the lines between fiction and reality, a bit like what movies are able to do to us. I hide a little bit of personal truth behind each song.  It’s an album about memories and how we stitch up these moments, making them movie-like to make sense of these experiences.”

Miller’s songs address “ love-like friendships, breakups, mermaids and missing girl mysteries - the album acting as a movie-like homage to girlhood and desire”. The music was ”crafted with notes from journals, poetry, voice memos, transformed and collected sounds”.

In addition to her own material Miller also delivered a couple of extraordinary covers, beginning with a remarkable transformation of John Denver’s “Take Me Home Country Roads”, a vast improvement on the unctuous original and the grossly irritating disco cover (whoever that’s by). Featuring breathy, heavily treated vocals the song was transformed into something fragile, beautiful and mysterious, setting the stall out for Miller’s own brand of ambient country.

Her own “Phony Cowboys”, from the “Pre Country” album,  featured the sounds of ghostly, echoed vocals and was tantalisingly brief.

The suitably quiet and delicate “To Be Mute” featured a blend of acoustic guitar and treated vocals, the combination of part singer songwriter / part ambient electronica a perfect amalgam for the Unitarian’s acoustics.

The following “The Kiss Interlude” also saw the sounds of Miller’s guitar being manipulated via a combination of foot pedals and hand operated electronica, the resultant sounds combining with gentle, fragile vocals as it segued into “Ballad of Miss Keats”, a song from the “Pre Country” album.

On “The Lighthouse”, another track from the “Pre Country” record, the electronic manipulation helped to give Miller’s voice a ghostly, shivering quality, this combined with the sounds of acoustic guitar, and at one juncture an electronically generated organ like drone.

There was another heavily disguised cover version with a slowed down,  electronically mutated interpretation of Elvis Presley’s “Don’t Be Cruel” that emphasised the vulnerability inherent in the lyrics.

Miller’s own “An Eye For A Heart” combined pre-recorded sounds resembling the tuning in of a radio with the drone of a mini keyboard and heavily treated vocals.

“Country Interlude”, featuring the sounds of guitar and electronics was merged with “Country” itself, the longest song on the “Pre Country” album and arguably effectively its title track. This was perhaps the definitive example of Miller’s distinctive ‘Ambient Americana’ blueprint, ghostly and ethereal, like tumbleweed blowing though an abandoned settlement in the Dust Bowl.

Finally we heard the eerie vocals and electronica of “Horse Girl”, another song from the “Pre Country” album and a piece with a definite “Twin Peaks” feeling about it.

This was an immersive and absorbing performance and Miller has certainly created a highly personalised sound-world that is very much her own. The sentiments behind her songs is always readily apparent but the constant vocal manipulation makes it difficult to decipher her lyrics. Whilst this helps to maintain an air of mystery that is very appropriate for her other-worldly music it can also be a tad irritating at times and a bit too much of a ‘novelty’ – a la Cher or Sparky’s Magic Piano. Miller is clearly an artist with something to say and sometimes it would be nice to hear it said clearly before she takes it somewhere else.

This observation aside this was an enjoyable and intriguing set that was very well received by the discerning Sy; Gigs audience, an audience that is consistently receptive to music fulfils the promoters’  criteria of “Nothing is Ordinary” and “Music For The Curious”.

WALT McCLEMENTS

Walt McClements – accordion, trumpet, electronics

Walt McClements is a multi-instrumentalist and composer based in Los Angeles. He is currently on tour in Europe and his visit to Shrewsbury was facilitated thanks to his association with harpist Mary Lattimore, also from LA, who played for Sy; Gigs back in 2023. McClements and Lattimore collaborated on the 2024 album “Rain On The Road”, released on the Thrill Jockey record label.

In addition to his work with Lattimore McClements has also released the solo albums “A Hole In The Fence” (2021) and “On A Painted Ocean” (2025), with music from both recordings featuring tonight, alongside some newer, as yet undocumented material.

McClements lived in Louisiana at one time and led the New Orleans based art-punk brass ensemble Why Are We Building Such a Big Ship? and worked as a one man band under the name Lonesome Leash. He has also worked as a touring musician with Weyes Blood (Natalie Laura Mering) and the bands Hurray For The Riff Raff and Dark Dark Dark.

“A Hole In The Fence” is a celebration of alternative lifestyles and features the sound of accordion and electronics. “A Painted Ocean”, which takes its title from a line by Samuel Taylor Coleridge expands his sonic palette and also features the sounds of organ, synthesisers and trumpet plus the saxophone of guest Aurora Nealand. The organ on the album was recorded at the Mission Gathering Church in Pasadena, California.

McClements commenced his performance with “A Painted Ship”, a track from his most recent album. This commenced with the sound of accordion drones looped and layered courtesy of a floor mounted effects unit containing a number of live looping pedals. Through these McClements was able to achieve an organ like quality that was particularly appropriate for the setting of the Unitarian Church.

Headphones on, hunched over, head bowed McClements was the very picture of concentration, but his, and our, reverie was rudely interrupted by a technical glitch, apparently a problem with the mixer processing the sounds of the various looping stations. There was a fairly lengthy delay, which rather punctured the atmosphere that McClements had so carefully and skilfully created.

Once he and the venue’s sound engineers had fixed the fault McClements started over with “Thresholds (through a hole in the fence)”, effectively the title track of his debut album. Equally immersive this introduced a sci-fi element courtesy of a looped electronic motif as McClements again began to build up cathedral organ like layers of sound.

Next we heard the single “Billows Like A Shore”, the title a quote from an Emily Dickson poem and the music inspired by Kraut Rock, with McClements combining electronic pulses with bursts of melody to create a piece that “ that feels to me like melting into the dawn”. During one particularly impassioned passage McClements stood up to play the accordion, again generating organ like sonorities. He also took up the trumpet for the first time, playing it one handed and simultaneously with the still droning accordion. His long, plaintive trumpet melody lines caused one audience member to make comparisons with Arve Henriksen. Meanwhile I was reminded that McClements (and Henriksen’s) use of trumpet was part of a lineage going all the way back to Miles Davis’ “Kind of Blue”, as journalist and broadcaster Richard Williams explained in his book “The Blue Moment”.

The title track from the “On A Painted Ocean” album saw McClements building up the music via a series of loops sourced from a simple introductory motif in a manner that recalled the music of Steve Reich. This segued into “Sirens”, which follows it on the album, with organ like drones combining with ambient sounds reminiscent of outer space or the ocean depths.

Next in this sequence was an untitled piece that again featured the sound of the trumpet, again played simultaneously with the accordion. I have to say that I was highly impressed by McClements’ playing of his ‘second’ instrument as the plaintive cry of his trumpet seemed to ring through the heavens.

I’m grateful to Walt for speaking with me afterwards and going through his set list with me. I think we were meant to hear a couple of other items, but the set was shortened due to the earlier technical difficulties.

Nevertheless I was hugely impressed by Walt McClements, another musician who has created a sound that is very much his own. He has taken the piano accordion, an instrument that he regards as a “proto-synthesiser” and taken into into new musical areas. He didn’t have any merch with him but I’ve very much enjoyed listening to “On A Painted Ocean” while writing this article. I was also impressed with his trumpet playing and with the overall way in which he structured his music, combining composition with an element of improvisation.

It represented a real coup to bring McClements to Shrewsbury and technical hitches aside this was an impressive performance that was both immersive and enjoyable.

To purchase recording by Lucy Sissy Miller and Walt McClements please visit;

https://metronrecords.bandcamp.com/album/pre-country

https://marigolds-records.bandcamp.com/album/laepoditia

https://waltmcclements.bandcamp.com/