THOMAS
TRUAX/ THE AUGUST LIST/ HUCK, Pindrop, The Art Bar, 19/4/14
Huck’s voice is a fascinating thing, a delicate, charred
blues keen that can be roughly triangulated from Chris Isaak, Neil Young and
Kermit. The songs he’s playing tonight,
with a second guitar to add electric trills, all come from his folk operetta Alexander The Great, which isn’t about
Alexander Of Macedon (or even Eric
Bristow), but appears to be a beat-flavoured rites of passage tale. The full stage show is coming to town soon,
and should be well worth a visit, but perhaps the songs feel a little thin
without the theatrical element: they have all the grand dramatic gestures, as
well as a dollop of highly literate tragedian’s nouse that can throw Pandora,
Babel and Thomas Aquinas into a single lyric, but sometimes feel sparse when we
yearn for a big, Jacques Brel arrangement.
The final number ramps up the gutsy bluesiness in a way that
unexpectedly reminds us of PJ Harvey circa To
Bring You My Love, and provides the set’s highpoint.
There’s not much we can tell you about The August List
except that they’re great: they’re the sort of act that encapsulates you for 30
minutes, and leaves you realising you’ve still got a blank notebook. We could tell you that “All To Break” sounds
like Sabbath’s “Paranoid” rewritten by Johnny Cash and played by The White
Stripes, or that their cover of Scout Niblett’s “Dinosaur Egg” has the rootsy
quirkiness of a downhome Lovely Eggs, but what really matters is that this duo
has the unhurried, natural sonic chemistry of all your favourite boy/girl duos,
and a neat way with a high octane country blast like “Forty Rod Of
Lightning”. Alright, some of the yee-hah
accents are of dubious provenance, but the music is wistful and frenetic by
turns, and one tune features a Stylophone, so they’re clearly not too in thrall
to deep South influences to add a cheeky Brit wink.
Stick insect thin and surrounded by home-made mechanical
instruments, Thomas Truax looks like he’s come direct from a scene cut from Tim
Burton’s Corpse Bride. His creations, such as the Hornicator and
Mother Superior, are either too well known to require a description, or too
alien to be captured by one, but tonight’s set really brings home the quality
of his songwriting – we’ll be honest, we thought we’d seen all he could offer,
and that tonight’s show would be a tired trot through his cabaret schtick, but
we were wrong. A straight, eerie ballad
version of Bowie’s “I’m Deranged” turns up early in the set, and quickly
confirms that Truax is a talented performer without all the trappings (even as
it confirms that he ain’t David Bowie), and from there it’s only a short hop to
the abstract campfire howl of “Full Moon Over Wowtown”, performed acoustic in
every cranny of the venue, including a quick jog round the block and a free
shot of tequila behind the bar. “The
Butterfly And The Entomologist” is still a beautiful tale – and surprisingly
apposite for Easter weekend – and a slow, treacly cover of “(I Can’t Get No)
Satisfaction” is a proper dues-payin’ roadhouse grind. Perhaps the evening’s high point is “You
Whistle While You Sleep”, which uses our favourite instrument, the Stringaling,
to build a cubist house loop a la Matmos, before cutting to allow Truax to
improvise insults to a loudmouth at the bar (who stayed wonderfully oblivious
for the whole tirade). Truax has enough
tricks and techniques to last a roomful of musicians a lifetime, but this set proves
that it’s in good old-fashioned composition and performance that he really
shines.
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