Gig review of David Thomas Broughton

Nothing could prepare me, or the dozens of those in my locality for what we were about to see "grace" the stage in front of our very eyes. Even a glass or ten of the Faversham's finest Sauvignon Blanc would not have been anywhere near enough to numb the pain or to even begin to drown out the strange occurrences that would be a common regularity, or rather irregularity should I say, for the remainder of this set.

Broughton's opening acoustics were promising but little did we realise that this would actually be THE defining moment of the set, for what followed was little short of disappointing. Whether or not it was mere technology to blame for his poor stagecraft or whether we as a crowd didn't quite understand what it quite was the Brought-meister was all about... I'll never quite know; his hasty exit post-set didn't allow for much questionable intervention on my part. But with Spitfire Charlie experiencing numerous technical hitches throughout the night, and which did little to hinder the quality of their set and the subsequent response from the crowd, one has to wonder whether we can in fact put technology at fault...

Now, pushing electrical snags aside for the minute to instead focus on another relatively significant issue... that of stage presence... or rather lack of it. In my opinion, delivery of your material can either make or break the performance, and in the case of DTB unfortunately, it was the latter. As an artist/band taking to the stage, if your bog standard material is strong enough you can usually afford to let standards slip in terms of your deliverance and let the music speak for itself, as it were. But for someone like DTB, where perhaps the crowd weren't too sure on how to respond to his material in the first place, somewhat of a prompt was required to ease us in and guide our movements accordingly. However, DTB's expressionless face and shifty movements really didn't give us much to go on, and as a result his efforts were received by a half hearted audience. Confusion and an element of disturbance was also a sentiment for many, as the end of the set saw DTB fall to his knees and attempt to percuss the body of the guitar, whilst swaying in an odd fashion! From this, Jon Gomm and Mark Wilson... the other prime one man and his guitar acts can be rest assured that the only competition they need look out for is each other!

Broughton's vocals were haunting but not in an Ashcroft / Starsailor's Walsh spine tingling kind of a way but more of the distorted, muffling, nasal, Halloween ghost variety, which was somewhat less agreeable with the ear drums. At one point, I found myself actually starting to wonder whether someone had smuggled in Charlie Brown's teacher from the Peanuts® comic strip series into the building... nasal it most definitely was!

Another problem for the majority of us there that night, was that we never quite knew where one song ended and the other begun, so we'd find on many an occasion our deathly applause would be interrupted by much of the same vocally!

All in all the set was all over the place really. We can't deny the man of his evident guitar-playing abilities but the vocals that served as an accompaniment to them is somewhat more of an acquired taste...