It’s great to welcome Jesse Sykes and Phil Wandcher back again after 23 years since they first played for Cosmic American Music here in Nottingham.

Jesse Sykes and The Sweet Hereafter is the result of an enduring musical alchemy between singer-songwriter Jesse Sykes and guitarist Phil Wandscher, which began in Seattle, Washington in 2001.

Blending folk, blues, orchestral pop and various psychedelic stylings, their sound culminates in what the New York Times has described as “spellbound music, rapt in fatalism and sorrow.” Known for her dusky, otherworldly vocals and lyrics that touch on the metaphysical, she was once described by MAGNET as being “less like a performer and more like a sage ” and “whether the sonic setting is one of doomy distortion or fragile finger picking, Sykes remains a truly unique vocalist whose dusky voice is capable of imparting a transcendent, almost spiritual quality to almost any tune it touches.”

The band has released five critically acclaimed albums; Reckless Burning (2002), Oh, My Girl (2005) and Like, Love, Lust and the Open Halls of the Soul (2007), while their fourth album Marble Son (2011) was released through Thirty Tigers in Nashville, on their own US imprint (Station Grey). Most Recently they have released, Forever, I’ve Been Being Born, UNCUT magazine has featured it as “Americana Record Of The Month” calling it “rapturous psyche-folk melancholia.”

Prior to his work with Jesse Sykes, Phil Wandscher help co-found the influential alt- country band Whiskeytown with Ryan Adams, in which he appears on the groups first three records, co-writing some of the bands most beloved songs, most notably songs on Stranger’s Almanac, which many say was also arguably the band’s most beloved album.

Sykes also plays in a band with guitarist and Grammy winning songwriter Dave Alvin (a project called the The Third Mind, on Yep Roc Records,) alongside members of Camper Van Beethoven, Counting Crows and Richard Thompson’s band.

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