Micah P. Hinson, London Cargo
Micah P. Hinson
September 15, 2009
Cargo is a strange venue – the bar area is sectioned from the performance only by a pair of black curtains, and last summer during the European Cup final the shouts and screams from the non-gig crowd occasionally threatened to drown out the band onstage (Gang Gang Dance, since you asked). A similar thing happens at one point this evening: during one of Micah P. Hinson’s more contemplative moments, a clearly audible rumble of human volume floats, disembodied, through the separating arch.
Not that it really matters, and he certainly doesn’t pay it any heed. Hinson’s first appearance in the UK in about a year sees him play it solo, lending tonight’s performance a real sense of event and a close-knit intimacy well suited to his music. It’s easy to sense that his ‘onstage persona’ is less any kind of performing artifice and more the natural aspects of his character shining through. He has a rough-edged but disarming charm, an easy rapport with the small but obviously devoted crowd and a lopsided grace that sees him spin and stagger up to the microphone for his next line. Occasionally dragging on his ‘e-cigarette’ (“it breaks my heart that a Frenchman can’t have a cigarette in his local café”) and sipping from a pair of glasses of red wine next to him, he’s a likeable soul and an astute storyteller.
Hinson’s new double album, All Dressed Up And Smelling Of Strangers, sees him tackle a fairly hefty selection of cover versions, including several that it would seem impossible to better. About half of tonight’s set is made up of covers. Songs by friends and local, unknown songwriters are aired alongside untouchables by Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. Yet Hinson neatly sidesteps the ‘murdering the classics’ conundrum by avoiding the act of reworking the songs themselves too much – in fact, his version of Cohen’s ‘Suzanne’ is an almost pitch-perfect re-creation – and instead allowing the weight of his own experience to imbue them with added meaning and new majesty. ‘The Times They Are A-Changing’ is introduced with the assertion that, forty-odd years later, Dylan’s acerbic commentary is still as relevant as ever. Hinson then proceeds to make it so – in his own deadpan way.
The placement of such seminal songs alongside his own in no way diminishes the visceral impact of either – if anything, it serves to highlight how exceptional Hinson’s songwriting can be, the resigned sigh of ‘When We Embraced’ and the almost impossibly yearning ‘I Keep Having These Dreams’ more than the equal of anything else he plays tonight. Main set closer ‘The Day Texas Sank to the Bottom of the Sea’ is simply beautiful, rising from a quietly contemplative beginning to its harrowing climax, Hinson’s scratchy baritone giving way to mercurial howl by the time the song breaks off.
It’s strange seeing Hinson perform in the absence of his band, who usually provide the kind of structure and muscular backing that made the arrangements on his last album And The Red Empire Orchestra sound so well fleshed-out. It’s testament I suppose to his enduring ease on stage and strength as a songwriter that tonight’s performance – just a man and his guitar – feels, if anything, even more fulfilling.
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