"lifting the mood of the room "
One of the things MacColl urged in the Critics group is that the residents make sure the evenings were varied - speed, tone and mood
If you get four songs at the same speed and vocal weight, one after the other, your audience's "ears go to sleep" - they simply stop listening
He suggested a balance of accompalied and unaccompanied songs helped an evening strike a balance
Charles Parker once tested this by playing recordings of folkies to schoolkids
He got them to describe the plot of a song, then played similar sounding songs and timed how long before they weren't able to follow them
Worth thinking about, in my opinion
Jim