MUSIC

The Fleece, Bristol (Wed 21 Sept) The apparently required Jacket – aka Jack Hobbs – plies plaintively sung songs featuring interchangeable guitar strums and lots of AA rhyme schemes whereby “taking time” means that he will soon be, inevitably, “feeling fine”. A set with as much variation as his wildly jumping eyebrow levels would prove a great leap forward. Possibly a tad unfair of the soundman to point out what can be done with an acoustic guitar by immediately sticking on Gravenhurst’s ‘Flashlight Seasons’.

The Darlingtons are a two guitars/bass out front four-piece with Beatley strap length. The chill prospect of nipple rash is in the air. Different genre, same lesson to be learned as the opener. The jackhammer, gut-kicking indie power churn is built well enough, de rigueur Greenwood-aping flourishes and all but, oh, the harvest to be reaped from seeds of a more considered structure rather than just every. Last. Song. Sounding. The. Same. Ditto the singer: splendidly-voiced – overarching, like Dave Gahan – but phrasing rigid as a Sudoku grid.

African rhythm, ska beat, a big melodic scale-straddling guitar solo of the type that – blooze bar bands and hair metal acts apart – was supposed to have been killed by punk. Thus, the first three songs from Totnes-hailing Cosmo Jarvis. Now here’s variety: a singer-songwriter wandering into trendsome Vampire Weekend chic, ‘classic’-period Elton John into Efterklang. Hell, the fourth track opens like ‘Wonderful Tonight’ before Jarvis and tight-as band shift sideways into latter years Bob Marley skank. Admirably, any correlation with musical fashion is pure happenstance – clearly, this is a man simply playing whatever the heck feels right. Indeed, as we note this very point, he straps on electric mandolin to lead a banjo-accompanied widescreen country hoedown.

There is a single, silk-thin common thread, mind: a bounce-pop coating. Well, apart from the one about the need to overcome slothsome can’t-be-arsedness and finally quit smoking and pissing in cups in the bedroom. Though – as evidenced throughout – the man can pen a lyric, and enjoys big-brained backing from the likes of Fry and Eno, you should take this music no more chin-scratchingly than him. Gig-wise, at least, this is straightforward get-thee-to-the-front-and-dance fun. He ends with a lengthy fret solo, straight off the back of a Duane Eddy twang riff, and then chordially constructs a launch pad for a kids-jumping punk-mosh storm. Biggest compliment of all is that this whole stylistic smorgasbord sounds not contrived but utterly, flowingly natural. (Julian Owen)

Copyright Julian Owen 2011