overlap

I'm a little behind on these, but I don't want to omit this one. A new
venue in what turns out to be more genteel cafe than sticky-floored
nite-club had me heading up the road to a town where it turns out I
haven't been to a gig since 1995. Finding the place was simple enough
and I settled down to wait for the gig.

Liam Dullaghan is someone I've seen before with his band The Have-Nots
but on his own he's even more engaging, possibly because he has to
talk directly to the crowd rather than Have-Nots co-conspirator
Sophie. He has the air of Evan Dando at his most confused and
vulnerable, singing like a Harvest-era Neil Young. In short it's
something that seems to bring out a little of the mothering instinct
in some of this crowd, along with a tiny taste of confusion at the
rambling, sometimes shambling intros to the songs. Good fun, and great
watching.

Headliner Chris Mills is someone I first enocuntered nearly eight
years ago. He brought me to Hawksley Workman who supported him back
then, he brought me to Robbie Fulks by covering a song he'd
encountered when Robbie covered it one night when they were on the
same bill, and he brought me to the solo work of Jon Langford of
Mekons fame, among others. All the same it's strange to go to a gig by
someone who lives on another continent and who recognises you when he
sees you!

Mixing tracks from the new album with songs from the half dozen
previous albums means that for every unfamiliar song there'll be one
you do know along in a minute, but the handful of new songs I've been
listening to on myspace are familiar enough too. There's a couple of
stories in between songs that get cleaned up a little for the benefit
of the table full of mid-teenagers with assorted parents (I assume),
and the show is entirely suited to the venue, whose trade is more in
decent food than rocked out hedonism.

Where Liam gently floats his songs around the room, Chris fires them
out with a rasp. I've seen rougher nights than this when his voice has
been scratchy close to breaking, but on this occasion we stay just on
the right side of gruff and croaky. And that's one of the things I
like, the mixture of tender in the content of the songs and the
occasional harshness in their delivery. While there's no particularly
close comparison, Tom Waits seems to have done ok without what you'd
call a naturally sweet voice, and in a world of autotuned
identivoices, Chris is distinctive enough to stand out.

I Wish I Was A Bomb closes the set neatly, and a quick chat over
buying the new album and the tour ep later, I was back out on the
road, to take twice as long getting home from a great little show as I
took to get there in the first place, but that's another story!

<pictures already on flickr, one or two to follow here>

"Golden throated shadows" is a line from Chris' song "Fall".