AJ Roach: Live Review

2008-07-23 10:49:00

Even though the Maze is the perfect setting for these types of intimate folk gigs where the acoustics allow you to hear every twitch and intake of breath, it never fails to piss me off when I walk in and see all the available space eaten up by tables and chairs. What does it take for people to realise that you don’t sit down at gigs?
    
I catch three songs from support act Elizabeth Cook and her musical influences seem to consist of Dolly Parton and Dolly Parton with a little bit of Shania Twain thrown in. It’s a pleasant enough opening start but is essentially country rock by numbers, like giving an art exhibition to a ham fisted kid with a boxful of crayons.
    
Like being at the opera
    
I’m praying for temporary deafness as the couple in front of me turn round to tell me to be quiet. Jesus, it’s like being at the opera. Watching all these folk music fans sitting down, politely sipping their drinks and waiting for the entertainment to begin, I start to wonder what it would take to make them riot. Folk music will not be the soundtrack to the revolution unless the revolution comes disguised as an invitation to a dinner party from a smug person you don’t like.
    
Trouble arrives in a crumpled, ill-fitting funeral suit, scuffed up shoes and a hangdog frown. AJ Roach takes the stage looking like a riverboat gambler or a disgraced Southern preacher. He scrapes his lank, greasy hair out of his eyes, pushes his glasses up his nose and starts punching out chords on his battered acoustic guitar.
    
A stream of folk-rock invective
    
Ably backed by fiddle and mandolin, he unleashes a stream of folk-rock invective, taking pot shots at the music industry, fashion victims and girls he’s been left heartbroken by. Although not screaming into the microphone or throwing himself into the moshing throng, Roach and his literate songs and tales of quiet sorrow grab you by the throat, invade your senses and wrap you in a blanket of sorrow and solitude.
    
As the night progresses Roach gets into his stride, his gravelly, whisky soaked voice lulling the crowd into a darkened place where only memory and loss remain. A relative unknown on these shores, Roach is here to promote his new record Revelation. His songs are intense and seething with softly spoken anger. His late night whiskey and cigarettes growl lends itself to this collection of songs, his voice alternating between a ragged bluesy howl and a soft stutter and shuffle of regret.
    
Rock and roll sung from the heart
    
Some of it might be miserable and tragic but it’s the best kind of misery. This music will linger long in the hearts and minds of the fifty or so fortunate souls sat in the Maze witnessing this wonderful gig, a testament to the healing redemption of rock and roll sung from the heart.
    
Review: Danny Wilson
    

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