The best thing about Kitt’s music is its complete absence of anything approaching cynicism. It’s beautiful and complex – with none of the affectation or pretension such words can go hand in hand with. And he’s such a sound guy: gangly, slow grin and sleepy Irish drawl – not rushing through the set, talking to the audience. He’s close enough to touch (if that’s your bag) and the music he plays is incredible.
A perfunctory listen will pick up skittery drum machines and warm electronics, the odd trumpet, Kitt's dreamdrugged voice and beautiful guitar work which combine into sublime songs that are more than a little removed from the staple of over-serious singer-songwriters wrestling with the pain of it all, and crooning utter shit. He oscillates from folk to balls-out rock to weird electro noise; his melodies are so simple, unashamedly so, and he has the knack of piecing them together in such a way as to send the hairs up on your palms. And that’s just the surface. Kitt’s stuff is incredibly intricate, micro-melodies come in and out in groups, alone, sonic waves boil up and disappear, a whole albums worth of beautiful music woven in to each and every track...ah, not enough space to go on, but I was curious to see how he would pull it off live. I was not disappointed.
‘Song From Hope Street’, for example, has a sunshiny glint in its eye on record but live Kitt creates a wall of sound (he has 5 – 6 piece band with him), with a hypnotic, darkening trumpet cutting through the urgency – Kitt somehow playing most of the acoustic guitar lines himself. This is his trump card, his signature almost; the guitar picking that can go from lulling to frantic and back again - it is the spidery ribbon that runs through all of his songs and no more effectively as on ‘Step Outside In The Morning Light’...no band here, just Kitt alone on stage on stage, teasing out a ghostly, porcelain fragile version of one of his (in my humble view) best songs. If I was a cheezeball, I’d say it was timeless...without missing a beat he switches lyrics over to Bill Withers' ‘Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone’ and it works flawlessly. Please do not let this put you off.
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Similarly, he slipped in a few lines of Madonna here and there and a touching sing along of Jackie Wilson’s ‘Higher and Higher’(Kitt strumming with only a couple of fingernails).
The set was a bit of a show case for his new album ‘Square 1’, which, if I’m being honest, I found a little bit treacly in places, but live this aspect seems to fall away almost entirely. Kitt and his band crank it up on many of the tracks. ‘House With Trains’ and ‘Long Long Stares’ were boomers and whatever the last cover was, it would have had Phil Spector hiding under the nearest table. ‘Sound Fade’s With Distance’ from his home recorded debut ‘Small Moments’ buzzes with bass and underwater electronics. As ever, his voice is like velvet.
It’s so easy to be a cynic. Nothing can ever be free of something, anything, which takes the shine off. With a lot of things, this can be found within it: some sort of pretence or self-conscious twinge that betrays something a little out of sync. I could detect none of this in Kitt or his songs, thus labelling me as the cynic, trying to find a way to not giving full marks ‘cause full marks denotes complete enthusiasm. And enthusiasm isn’t cool, is it?
Screw all that. David Kitt is a remarkable musician who has created some remarkable music. He’s still young, and I hope that he lives to be very old.
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