George Thomas & The Owls
Marlborough Theatre, Brighton
Brighton’s Marlborough Theatre is tonight beautifully bedecked with flowers and fairy lights; a fitting locale for Sshh! Promotions and Simple Folk’s line-up of understated, underappreciated guitar music. The onstage adornments also serve as a playful contrast to the dark folk tales of tonight’s headliner, George Thomas.
Tonight, Manchester’s man Thomas is Owl-less, performing without the band that brought a sprightly musicality to his three ultra lo-fi albums. With only a battered electro-acoustic guitar and a microphone, Thomas is still an interesting prospect: tree surgeon by day; twisted folk troubadour by night, with his music similarly awash with contradictions.
Thomas is also incredibly shy, something only heightened this evening by the Marlborough Theatre’s intimate space. He attempts to disguise his shyness through a feigned nonchalance that sadly alienates a significant portion of the audience, coming across as arrogance. At points in the set it seems that Thomas can’t summon the energy to play or sing properly. What is closer to the truth is that he is uncomfortable parading as an accomplished musician or singer – he knows he is neither. To point out Thomas’ technical short-comings misses the point entirely: his monotone singing is odd, occasionally off-key, and his guitar playing scrappy at best but then this makes it even more pleasurable when he seemingly stumbles across the most delicate melody mid-track.
Thomas’ appeal lies chiefly in his lyrics, which drip with irony and wit, and in a live setting would only appear trite against a more polished musical back-drop. Tonight, Thomas plays very little from any of his three recorded albums instead focussing on gentle near-throw-away ballads that exist only long enough to conjure an image much like a William Carlos William poem. He does however play Brighton Pier and Asbestos from this year’s excellent, ‘Laughing at the Raging Sea’. Asbestos is a deliciously macabre tale of a man punching a hole in the ceiling of his house after splitting up with his partner only to then inhale asbestos particles. Thomas’ humour also lapses into the downright silly with a ditty about a waterproof, fireproof, deathproof spacesuit. Sadly, for the majority of Thomas’ set, his awkward onstage manner detracts from his carefully pitched ironies and the audience tend to laugh at him more than with him.
Ultimately Thomas does little tonight to win over those unconvinced of his talent, yet for those intrigued by his idiosyncratic world-view, he proves himself as both the diamond and the rough.
