JOSEPH ARTHUR has proved in recent years that he is anything but your run-of-the-mill singer-songwriter, particularly when it comes to live performance. When I reviewed him for W&H in Cork several years ago I was particularly impressed by his skillful, distinctive, and at the time innovative, use of samplers and FX pedals. Tonight in King Tut's it appears he has added another string to his live performance bow: the painting solo.
Yes, you read correctly, in fact Arthur kicks off tonight by proceeding to the dury-rigged canvas/sheet at the back of the stage and scrawls the words "She Paints Me Gold" next to a Picasso-style sketch of a face. It turns out that this is the title of his first number, which, aided and abetted by a phenomenal harmony pedal that produces the aural equivalent of a celestial choir of Joes, is a (golden) syrupy swoon of a song, that transcends its somewhat gimmicky intro. That said, it also contains the seeds of Arthur's undoing on occasion during tonight's show: a tendency to indulge in overlong, one-man-band, instrumental codas.
Thankfully, numbers such as "Devil's Broom" and "Can't Exist" have enough to them, both in terms of songwriting and groove (artificially constructed or no), to allow us to forgive Joe those occasional moments of, if you pardon the expression, musical masturbation.
In fact, by contrast to my previous Joseph Arthur live experience, tonight it is those songs which rely on unadorned vocal-and-guitar that shine strongest, suggesting that Arthur has matured, and grown in confidence, as a songwriter in the intervening years. "You Are The Dark" provides an early example, a beautifully pitched performance of an equally beautiful lyric that conveys infinitely more emotion than some of the more arranged numbers.
Previously, there have also been some reservations where Arthur's ability to engage with his audience is concerned. For about the first half of tonight's show these reservations stand, until about halfway through a reworking of "Speed of Sound" (in which Arthur, again using pedals, makes his guitar sound somewhat like a vaguely out-of-tune steel drum orchestra), when a disgruntled punter chimes in with "You're f***Ing better than this!".
This outburst, and the counter reaction from the majority of the crowd declaring their support for Joe, seems to galvanise Arthur, and leads to a decidedly stronger concluding half. Audience requests help, and Joe obliges with a spare and gorgeous "Echo Park", which more than matches its string-laden recorded counterpart.
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Disgruntled punter is not easily silenced however, and there is further jibe during "Cry Like A Man", provoked by Arthur's retreat to his canvas for a further prolonged painting solo. Arthur in turn responds by directing a venomous last verse (in a suitably Dylanesque manner) at the offending member of the audience, and from there he hits the home straight in style with a set-closing of "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out". Sacred ground, but Joe pulls it off, just about.
He returns for a generous six song encore, obviously gratified by the audience support in the face of his heckler. To begin with, there's another set highlight in the form of stripped down guitar-and-falsetto rendering of current single "Even Tho", a love song that really ought to be getting airplay all over the band.
Therefollows an abrupt shift of tone in the shape of the moody, violent "Leave Us Alone", and the righteous, quasi-biblical "All Of Our Hands", an admission/accusation of collective guilt aimed at the peopled of the developed world who allow those in the underdeveloped world to live and die in horrifying conditions through continued inaction. Sample quote: "Until we feed the starving, blood is on all of our hands / until we clothe the naked, all of us are damned".
Remarkably, Arthur once again changes gears from the polemically political to the achingly personal for "Honey and the Moon", and tonight's finale "You've Been Loved". Both songs see Arthur at his most gentle and stripped back, and most lyrically affecting.
Mercurial is an overused word in rock journo circles, but it really seems to be the only choice to describe Joseph Arthur's talents as both writer and performer. You may not know what you're going to get from one song to the next, but given the majority of the contemporary music industry's success in battering new talent into submission until they produce naught but homogenous, saleable, assembly-line "product", wild cards like Joseph Arthur are more vital than ever.
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