21 February 2010
After what must have been a less-than-smooth approach to the event, which had originally been due to also feature Toro Y Moi and Jeremy Jay, at a reduction of £1.50 we instead had as sole support a diffident chap called Slushy Guts (why?), who sometimes sounded a tiny bit like Sleeping States used to, but couldn't really be described as a remotely adequate replacement for anyone.
Dent May played with help from a one-man choir/ rhythm section, and they tootled through his quirky, perky ukelele-led repertoire, which went down well with the crowd, who mostly looked and danced as if they were a Sunday School teacher's outing, which was both odd and funny.
It really is almost impossible to hear DM's bouncy songs without head-nodding and foot-tapping, but even so it did wear a touch thin after a while, as there proved to be little variety in the tone or pacing of tune after tune. From his first album only Meet Me In The Garden did more than just chug along, with its doo-wop diversions and more developed song structure, and was the clear stand-out for those reasons.
Some quite interesting new countryfied material also featured, in part describing the mis-haps of a hopefully fictional Maloney (?) if memory serves, with the uke rested - no bad thing - for a battered guitar, which all sounded promising for the next album.
No comments:
Post a Comment