With World Cup fever in the air, alongside the usual Friday night hype and summer madness, it’s with some reprieve that I headed down to the cellars below Bristol Beacon. Extensively revamped as part of the Beacon’s £132 million transformation, what were once damp, neglected subterranean spaces have been cleaned, waterproofed, and reimagined as The Weston Stage.
An intimate cellar venue now sits alongside a suite of music education and recording studios. The result is a genuinely surprising space. Low ceilings, warm acoustics, and an atmosphere that feels both old and modern. And it works perfectly for Friday night’s folklore-inspired double bill.
First up on the bill was Eve Appleton. She would usually perform with a six-piece band, but chose to lean into the space’s intimacy. For this performance, Appleton stripped things back to just her and fellow artist Anna Bennett. It was a wise call. Without the armor of a full ensemble, what remained was more exposed and affecting—two voices trading harmonies and easy banter with a crowd made up largely of family and friends. The cellar filled up quickly, and the atmosphere relaxed from the off.
Appleton played a mix of yet-to-be-released material and tracks from 2025’s debut Bible Black. There’s something quietly magnetic about hearing music so rooted in landscape and memory in such a small room.
Her songs reflected the rhythms and beauty of the West Country rather than the city’s edgier instincts. They felt pastoral, patient, and unhurried. Whether she sang about life, love, or seagulls (yes, seagulls), Appleton held the room without effort.
The handover to Emily Magpie was seamless. Joined by bandmates Kieran Ball (bass/guitar/vox) and Max Harrison (drums/vox), she took the stage to promote Howl, her new mini-album. Magpie is a Bristol-based artist, producer, and Brit Award-nominated mastering engineer whose previous album There Are Other Forms of Strength earned attention from BBC 6 Music, NPR, and Crack Magazine.
While Appleton’s set leaned into simplicity, Magpie’s expanded outward with electronics, looped guitar effects, and some nimble bass work from Ball propel songs about May Queens and Changelings into unexpected territory. It was rooted in the South West in the best sense: an instinct for texture and layering that draws equally on the city’s electronic heritage and the ancient landscapes just beyond its edges. Something in the music felt genuinely haunted. Not in a gothic, overwrought way, but in the way old places carry old stories.
It took the band a few tracks to fully lock in, but by the third song they appeared visibly relaxed and clearly having a good time. The audience followed suit, howling along to choruses and clapping out rhythms without the need for prompting. Ball deserves a special mention. True to his surname, he was a barely containable ball of energy. Throughout the set, moved fluidly between indie bass runs and spooky Jazzmaster atmospherics. He didn’t stand still for even a second. That enthusiasm became infectious.
The highlight—albeit a heart-rendering one—was “Two Feet,” Magpie’s single about the father she lost at a young age. Harrison’s light-footed shuffle and Ball’s shimmering guitar lifted Magpie’s vocal beautifully. It became a tribute to a parent that earned its emotion without a trace of sentimentality. The room felt it.
With Howl‘s compact runtime exhausted, Magpie reached back into her earlier catalog. She then concluded, delivering the night’s most unexpected moment: a cover of Drake’s “Hotline Bling.” That absolutely shouldn’t have work as well as it did. Stripped back and soulful, it transformed into something else entirely. Ball, throwing himself into some spirited backing vocals, threatened to bring the ceiling down. The room didn’t quite know what hit it.
By 10pm, the evening had shifted into an unfussy reminder of the depth of talent floating around Bristol. It remained intimate and unpretentious, the kind of show that lets the music do the heavy lifting. Both acts made a quietly convincing case for nature as a creative compass.
The Weston Stage, it turns out, is exactly the right place to hear it.