July 4th, 2006 : Oh dear Tom
I’ve meant to write something about Tom McRae’s gig at the Brighton Fringe Festival Spiegeltent for a while. But life is off the rails right now and as for so many things, I couldn’t find the time, and frankly the words, to do Tom even a teensy bit of justice. Look, though: the time’s been forced on me thanks to a bout of insomnia and the words feel, well, like they are not being pulled out of my mouth like teeth.
Amazing what a bit of heat stroke will do, eh?
So it’s almost a year to the day when a good friend leant me Tom’s first record, and to be honest, I didn’t take a great deal of notice.
That is, until I woke up from my stupor and realised that anyone who can approach the subject of the Holocaust to such a devastating effect with the crushingly simple line “You cut her hair, you cut her hair” deserved a second, third, fourth, fifth listen and some serious respect. Good? Deep? Dark? Where had you been all my life, Mr McRae?
Makes me all the more ashamed that the very song had first glanced off my still dull cranium during the autumn days of 2003. I had practically ignored the track, featured on one of those semi-pathetic MOR fest “Acoustic” compilations the record companies throw out to us every couple of years featuring such musical greats as Nickleback and generally being about as acoustic as my Telecaster put through a Big Muff and fed through a maxed out Blues Breaker into the biggest PA you’ve ever seen. If only. But I digress.
So, on to the show.
Quite how a man, in whose repertoire you are unlikely to find a merry word, can have a crowd in stitches not fifteen minutes into his set is unknown to me. But the funny ones are always the depressives, right? Whatever – he pulls it off because he’s a smart guy dissecting James Blunt just minutes after belting through “Mermaid Blues” – “I can raise you from the deep or drown with you in doubt” – un-backed, no guitar, just him, a microphone, two-hundred hearts simultaneously break.
And with this he sets the tone for the show – song after song of relentless melodrama-romanticism interspersed with quips and self referential gags that teeter on the verge of self indulgence… until his chocolate voice lifts you up then dashes you against the rocks, again. He can say what he likes. Dose me up, indeed.
It was the best show.
And yes, Tom, if you ever read this, the twat who was taking far too many photos, with a camera that was far too big, was me. Hope you like your portrait.