Brown Horse + Fust

I must have seen Brown Horse perform more than any other band. I’ve watched them in almost every Norwich venue: Lowell (RIP), Octagon Chapel, The Holloway, and here again at Voodoo Daddy’s. I even went to the Moth Club in Hackney to see them headline a Bob Dylan cover night in 2024 and I can vouch that it was one of the best gigs I’d been to - truly taking on the Highway 61 era Dylan in full force. They’ve appeared in my Spotify top artists more than once, and they’ve certainly made themselves at home in my Wrapped.

Until last night, though, I’d never seen Brown Horse billed as support. Not because they’re too good for it (nothing ossifies a band faster than believing that!) but because Brown Horse have always carried the implicit authority of headliners. Even when they’re ragged at the seams, even when the set feels like a public rehearsal for new ideas, they have a gravitational pull: the room doesn’t simply watch them, it subtly reorients around them.

But now they’re starting to appear on bills with some of the most exciting American country-inflexed projects passing through Norwich - Ryan Davis & the Roundhouse Band and Lily Seabird most recently - bringing a dose of Americana to the city. Last night they supported Fust, a North Carolina alt-country band, while also road-testing new material ahead of their own tour.

Brown Horse started their set with the recent release ‘Hares’ - Patrick Turner, the lead singer, revealed that fellow member Rowan Braham wrote the song. It’s something Patrick often does at gigs, and I like it: it gives you a flavour of each member’s output, a reminder that Brown Horse are a shifting collective rather than a single songwriter with accompaniment.

‘Hers’ arrived with guitars that felt almost domineering; I’ll blame it on the mix, but heavy fuzz coated everything, giving the sound a blown-out intensity and making it tricky to catch the lyrics. Even so, it still felt unmistakably Rowan-written: expansive and emotive, with a certain unguarded sentimentality beneath the distortion. Patrick’s voice cut through in a raw, strained wail that prized expression over polish, and the guitars, jangly under all that fuzz, swelled into feedback and abrasive little storms. The drumming was laid-back and slouchy, sitting behind the beat rather than pushing it forward, as if the song were leaning into its own weight.

They played a few other new songs too. ‘Wipers’ had some of the most impressive guitar work of the set — sharp without ever feeling flashy. Emma Tovell’s new track ‘Sorrow Reigns’ felt like the set’s darkest turn: the lap steel hovered in warped, keening lines, dragging the whole song slightly out of joint. Then ‘Wreck’, another new one, and you could feel the band testing how much noise and looseness they could smuggle into their songs without losing their sense of shape.

If Brown Horse’s new material hinted at a band loosening its edges, Fust made a full case for looseness as a virtue. The North Carolina alt-country band are touring on Big Ugly, their third album on Dear Life Records - the same label that put out MJ Lenderman’s Boat Songs and has become a hub for this current wave of country-inflexed guitar rock.

Live, they played a generous spread of tracks from the new album - including ‘Gateleg’/‘Maggie’s Store’, ‘Bleached’/‘Born an Angel’, ‘Goat House Blues’ and ‘Jody’ (‘To See You Love Me’). ‘Goat House Blues’ was especially satisfying in the room: when the guitar finally takes over, it doesn’t just build, it punches through the outro, a sudden muscular release. ‘Jody’ was another highlight, the fiddle slapping against the groove with real bite - not ornamental, but physical, almost percussive.

But it was the penultimate song, ‘Sister’, that did something special. It began in familiar alt-country territory and then slowly slipped into a slowcore Low-esque crawl, the ending unspooling into a drawn-out instrumental I loved. The fiddle started to misbehave, turning scratchy and half-electronic - little beepy signals and warped tones - while the drums ticked underneath like a clock. It had the kind of extended-outro pleasure I always fall for: repetition stretched until it turns ecstatic, the song refusing to end so it can become something else. It made me think of the bands I love who do that best - Black Country, New Road do it brilliantly, and Geese too, stretching repetition until it turns ecstatic. Watching it, I found myself thinking - not critically, just longingly - about Brown Horse: how perfect their songs already are, and how exciting it could be if they occasionally let the instruments run for longer, trusting drift as much as momentum.

What last night proved is that this circuit rewards bands willing to leave seams showing. Brown Horse’s set was gripping rather than polished - heavy with promise, occasionally swallowed by its own sound, while Fust delivered the night’s most satisfying sense of shape and release. Together they made the “support” label feel beside the point: less a ladder than a link, Norwich stitched briefly into the wider American-inflexed touring map.