Tom McRae & Hotel Cafe: Live Review

2008-04-21 10:14:01

I thought I was turning up on a bitterly cold and windswept Sunday night to see Tom McRae, a troubadour in the vein of Damien Rice and Nick Drake, hand crank his acoustic gems to an appreciative crowd. What I got was a passport back to a time before folk music was used to sell Ford cars and Sony TVs, when it actually mattered, when people wrote songs because they had stories to share and demons to exorcise, and the only way to do that outside of a primal scream or a court hearing, was to sit down with a six string guitar and a harmonica and sandpaper your soul raw.
    
It was one of those gigs that break time. Nothing else mattered apart from being there. You can’t review gigs like this, you have to let it swallow you up; immerse you in the warm salt water of its brilliance.
    
Strip clubs and stalking
    
There are so many highlights that I can’t list them because I couldn’t even write them all down. I stopped taking notes and just stared open mouthed at the stage while Jim Bianco makes us laugh with his atmospheric tales of strip clubs and stalking.
    
Catherine Feeny rips the bandage off our hearts when she sings: “You say, I don’t want to be like everyone else, who’s cruel to you and hating myself, I don’t want to live with this everyday unkindness. But I still don’t believe you.” Cary Brothers, his beard straggly and corduroy hat pulled down over his eyes, decimates the crowd with a stirring rendition of Blue Eyes. This was the one song I wanted to hear. He doesn’t let us down, tearing through it backed by the Hotel Café house band.
    
Middle-finger salute
    
Greg Laswell played his happy sad songs and cracked us up as he told us, with his pork pie hat shadowing his eyes, how his catholic mother reacted to his songs, that he was accused of blasphemy and bringing shame on his uncle who is a pastor because he used the word 'goddamn' to often. To compound the family’s sense of shame he plays St Theresa Says as a kind of middle finger salute.
    
Brian Wright plays crazed mandolin and harmonica to accompany his tales of high school drugs and messed up women and the gig becomes like a bad case of manic depression because when I don’t feel like crawling into a dark corner and drinking till every memory I have ever known has disappeared, I find myself laughing and smiling and blessed to be there, a beer in my hand and tiny firecrackers exploding in my head.
    
McRae plays Alphabet of Hurricanes which he introduces as a new song. From the stage he says its seven minutes long. My scepticism kicks in because I can do a lot in seven minutes. I can drink a warm beer and rearrange the pepperoni on a pizza into a smiley face. I can read a Charlie Brooker article and laugh myself hoarse but I would be lying if I didn’t tell you that the seven minutes that I was standing swaying listening to that song was the most amazing experience.
    
Tiny moments of magic
    
I have thought hard about this but there is nothing else I can say. To describe every tiny moment of magic and trying to make it make sense would bleach out what made it so amazing, I never thought I would write this because it’s unforgivably lazy but you really did have to be there and if you weren’t then you have a lot more to forgive yourself for than me ending a review with a bullshit cliché.
    
Review: Danny Wilson
    
Images: Lisa Mayfield
    

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