Run Toto Run [Live] at the Canvas Lounge

Knutsford 22 August 2009

August 28, 2009, 07:55 PM

Views: 458   Comments: 2

There's something about the moments when Rachael Kichenside pauses for a microsecond, looking half upwards, small smile playing, that encapsulates the act of making this particular magic. This is a great place to see Run Toto Run. Performing a gig on a terraced roof garden, the place small enough to feel like they are playing just for a few friends. This is a charity event arranged a little while ago. Reflective of recent progress by the band, Run Toto Run are tonight elevated to the top of the bill.

The music is built around Rachael's voice and presence. The voice is clear but comforting, scratching the itch in the right bit of our brains. The song build is elegant enough, the structure is there. Much as I hate to make comparisons, it's unavoidable, and if you take a combination of the influences they themselves cite, specifically Sufjan, the Postal Service and Passion Pit, that will get you onto the map of what to expect. Indie that could equally well be played on synths or violins and acoustic guitars and mandolins.
This is the trick that Run Toto Run manage. Inevitably it is the quality of the writing and the engagement of Rachael's voice that has to work if they are going to succeed. And succeed it does, raising this right up there with the best of what's out there at the moment, certainly in the up and coming ranks.

Even without the animal heads and the fairy wings in their tremendously impressive 'Sleepyhead' video (see below) , there is a real theatrical bit of magic going on here, a Midsummer Night's Dream for an electro-generation if you will. Yes it's that 'Sleepyhead', the Passion Pit one. In their cover, Run Toto Run pull off the rare feat of both remaining true to the original and utterly reinventing it and look like they are just having the world's best time while they do it.


Chatting with Rachael after the gig she comments that their recent EP represents where they were maybe a couple of months ago. Hearing them live tonight, and then listening to the EP in the car again, I think I know what she's getting at. The recorded version is whimsical and folky, a twee little moment; what we heard up on the terrace was layered with keyboards and synths. Apart of course from 'Sleepyhead', which they closed their live set with, and for which they reverted to the traditional instruments. Maybe that actually is their thing, that colliding moment of voice, mandolin and a Korg synthesizer.

Rachael also tells me that although they have been going as a band for well over a year, it was only 10 weeks ago that she lost her job at Channel M in Manchester as the local TV station drastically stripped down their music channel. She had worked there as a music booker. As she says, it is time for her to put what she learned there to good use. Inevitably then, the last 10 weeks have seen things ramping up. They are now reduced to a three-piece, and two of them have gone full-time, only one of the guys is still trying to combine the band with "ordinary" life. So this is it for Run Toto Run, it's make or break time. No pressure then.

While we're talking, someone else shouts across and wants to know how old Rachael is. " How old do they think I am?", "21" they reply, "That's nice, I am older than that, but still a long way on the right side of 30" and she tells me that in London at least, the buzz has started. Scenesters checking them out to the extent that she's been 'press-aged'. All of a sudden, I'm the press and us lot will 'just make it up', printing stories that she loves graphic novels when she's never even read one. What an odd thing to make up. As if...

We are still friends though, and we exchange notes on London versus northern audiences before I leave them to it. They've got a stack of dates coming up and I will certainly be making a point of seeing Run Toto Run again.

#1 | Subscribe | Send to Friend | Print | Discipline | Report