WOW, DO SNOW PATROL HATE AMERICANS. HALFWAY through this record, buried under a feedback avalanche at the start of ‘Little Hide’, they’ve included an answerphone message from bassist Mark McClelland to the abode of singer Gary Lightbody and drummer Jonny Quinn, dropping the bombshell that they must change their name from Polar Bear or face death by big writ from the American band of the same name.
Which not only explains the two-fingered title of their debut album but also throws light on why it sounds like every influential American band of the ’90s being chained, in turn, into a spin dryer and having brain-eating robot bugs drilled into their heads by a grinning Thom Yorke. Easy targets first: The Breeders are mashed to a gibbering, glistening pulp on ‘Starfighter Pilot’, ‘The Last Shot Ringing In My Ears’ takes the Black & Decker to Lou Barlow’s torpid whining and ‘Absolute Gravity’ garottes every wide-trousered rock-rap tosser it can find with a ball of trip-hop razor wire. Seven Gadaffi-friendly tunes in, however, they come over all [I]faux [/I]flattered, as if realising that any more Yank baiting and they’d be questioned by the CIA about the embassy bombings. ‘NYC’ is a humble homage to Screaming Trees and ‘Days Without Paracetamol’ is so Pixies it gains seven stone halfway through.
A-ha! But it’s all a trick! For as they’re about to be handed the keys to Buttfuck, they set about REM with jack hammers on closer ‘One Hundred Things You Should Have Done In Bed’. Revenge is sweet when scuzzy around the edges.
Kacey Musgraves has cast a spell across London’s Roundhouse. Dry ice shrouds the Texan artist and her 8-piece band in a hazy mist, the lighting dramatic – at times it evokes the break of dawn, others a thunderous rainstorm. And at the eye of this hurricane is Musgraves, her luminous vocals shining as brightly as the disco ball that’s illuminated during a rousing rendition of ‘Anime Eyes’. With the audience — who obey requests to be in the moment and not just view the gig through a lens — enraptured, the ethereal magic of the live show threads throughout.
Tonight’s gig is part of the ‘Deeper Well World Tour’, the shows accompanying Musgraves’ sixth studio album released earlier this year. It’s a record that saw her “navigating new beginnings”, as she said about its titular track: “Sometimes you reach a crossroads. Winds change direction. What you once felt drawn to doesn’t hold the same allure. You get blown off course but eventually find your footing and forage for new inspiration, new insight and deeper love somewhere else”. Or, as she more succinctly reflects in its chorus: “And I’ve got to take care of myself/I found a deeper well”.
This live setting, with the lush arrangements delivered by Musgraves’ double-denim clad band, is where the songs shine, the resilience and complex emotions they convey shining through. The power of opener ‘Cardinal’ ricochets through the venue accompanied by fleshed out instrumentals, while the lilting ‘The Architect’’s quietly questioning lyrics resonate in their subtle accompaniment.
Tracks that faded into the background on ‘Deeper Well’ at times work better here, too. ‘Jade Green’ is taken from a subdued slow burn into a thundering storm, Musgraves swathed in lights of the titular colour, strobes evoking lightning and crashes of percussion closing out the song, before the chaos subsides into a musical ‘Rainbow’. ‘Lonely Millionaire’, meanwhile, is elevated in this setting, the slinky track coming with mass sing-a-longs.
Yet for all the mysticism and magic when the music is playing, in-between songs Musgraves charms in a very different way. Her breezy wit juxtaposed with gut-wrenching music reminiscent of fellow on-stage entertainers Adele or Lewis Capaldi. As the band gear up for a quieter point in the set and huddle in closer at the front of the stage, Musgraves delights the audience with her tight-5 about the food poisoning and stomach upset she started the tour with, which soon spread around her touring party like wildfire. How did we get onto this story? An audience heckle that sounded a bit like a Spice Girl prompting Musgraves to reveal “I met Sporty the other day and almost shat myself! Speaking of…”
That’s not to say this humour isn’t also evident in Musgraves music — the excellent couplet “If you save yourself for marriage, you’re a bore/You don’t save yourself for marriage, you’re a hor-rible person” is sung with gusto by the crowd, in a stripped back rendition of ‘Follow Your Arrow’ (a cut from Musgraves’ debut studio record ‘Same Trailer Different Park’). And there’s rousing renditions of the jubilant kiss-off ‘High Horse’, and the eye-roll at an insecure ex on ‘Breadwinner’.
As she closes with a cover of Bob Marley & The Wailers’ ‘Three Little Birds’ and a short snippet of ‘Easier Said’, Musgraves tells the audience: “I hope your well has been deepened”. With the spell-binding communal magic of being in the moment and Musgraves’ powerhouse performance, we don’t doubt they have.
Kacey Musgraves played:
‘Cardinal’
‘Moving Out’
‘Deeper Well’
‘Sway’
‘Too Good to Be True’
‘Butterflies’
‘Happy & Sad’
‘Lonely Weekend’
‘Lonely Millionaire’
‘Follow Your Arrow’
‘The Architect’
‘Nothing to Be Scared Of’
‘Heaven Is’
‘Jade Green’
‘Rainbow’
‘Golden Hour’
‘Anime Eyes’
‘Don’t Do Me Good’
‘Justified’
‘Breadwinner’
‘High Horse’
‘Slow Burn’
‘Three Little Birds’ (Bob Marley & The Wailers cover)
‘Easier Said’
