Truly blessed are the meek it seems. Not only are they going to inherit the earth, but the Internet allows even mice to roar like lions, an emancipation for the generations of bookworms who fifty years ago were getting sand kicked in their faces.
It helps, of course, that so much contemporary music celebrates emotional understatement and finesses the invisible lines between the heart and the head; you can’t see Bon Iver for instance taking on Drake at anything other than a competitive game of extreme Monopoly.
It seems equally certain that Christopher Duncan will be playing when the nine stone dripping wet go marching in for the planet’s keys, such is his annexation of radio, Mercury Prize shortlistings and the broad critical recognition received for his début album ‘Architect‘.
Given this, the need for overstatement and spectacle is made irrelevant. Tonight’s show is about music, a sweet and highly textural strain which he conjures up from influences such as ‘Postcard‘-era Aztec Camera, Paul Simon and Fleet Foxes to name but a few. To this end, a bespectacled and preppy looking Duncan arrives on stage with absolutely no fanfare whatsoever, shyly acknowledging a suitably polite Sunday evening Brudenell crowd before opener ‘Silence and Air‘. Then comes a jarring moment: the clipped, bygone delivery which made ‘Architect’ such an affecting proposition appears to be lost, the singer’s voice cracking more than once whilst running over notes not many would try.
We get an apology immediately after it finishes, Duncan explaining he’s just getting over a cold in much the same matter of fact way you assume he speaks to his mum (the following night’s show in Norwich is postponed because of it). Thankfully, tonight the rustiness soon passes, a particular relief given just how much songs like ‘He Believes In Miracles‘, ‘Novices‘ and ‘Say‘ rely on soaring, close three part harmonies that allow his work its cloistered uniqueness.
Given the building career momentum, it’s been interesting trying to figure what the Glaswegian would do next. The answer has been a freshly released four track EP, from which a highly cadenced version of the Cocteau Twins‘ ‘Pearly Dewdrops Drops‘ is lifted, whilst the newly written ‘So I Hear‘ at first listen falls pleasingly a little far from the tree of ‘Architect’s folky neo-classicism.
It’s a set that’s perhaps inevitably brisk given the lack of catalogue, with the positively breakneck by comparison ‘Garden‘ wrapping the main part up before the quartet return for the pin-drop acoustic breath of ‘Castle Walls‘. The crowd’s applause at the end is the definition of genuine, the band’s acknowledgment of it likewise. It may well be a few more years before the nerd’s Trip Advisor ratings, Go Pro videos or Star Wars conventions completely take over this dustball, but for now they have artists as subtly brilliant as C Duncan on their side.
So we say once more: beware of the meek bearing gifts such as this.
