Songs of the soft white underbelly, delicate dirges of no small beauty. We’re in Birmingham to see Ben De La Cour.

AMERICANOIR

So what else to do on a slow Sunday in July, it appearing there little else happening, what better reason than to visit a favourite small venue and catch the singer and writer of one of last year’s finest records. Unless you are familiar with that record, Sweet Anhedonia, or the predecessors, the chances are the name might mean little. Which is a travesty, as his low key songs of melancholia, often embracing the oppressed and ignored, the unlucky and the reckless, are a need to be acquired delicacy, that linger long on the senses.

I jest; a slow Sunday it wasn’t, as the neighbouring bar, let alone the whole city, country even, seemed glued to TVs across legion licensed premises, in the vainglorious pursuit of willing on the result in some game of football. De La Cour took that dent in his potential audience on the chin, happy to play for the twenty odd souls who had better taste than judgement. On a brief tour, largely to take in the Maverick festival, he and his battered guitar seem to be enjoying the experience, and, on this exposure, so did I.

“Americanoir” is how his own website describes his muse, and that is a good take on it. Songs, very much in a story mode, evoke the songbook of Townes Van Zandt, with a bit of added James McMurtrey-esque quirk for good measure. I don’t know if your Facebook feeds and reels include such exotica as Soft White Underbelly, by Mark Laita, but if you are familiar, it feels these are De La Cour’s people, unless his slim youthful vigour hides a dreadful reality, tucked away, a picture in his attic. With a neat and nifty way with words, if the tunes don’t get you, the lyrics certainly will.

The KGC we know, a cosy and intimate space where musicians can feel safe to be themselves; anything else would stick out like a sore thumb. In truth the number of punters is almost immaterial, the walls seeming able to shift in and out, an where even the 80 odd capacity can feel like a cosy living-room. Ideal for this sort of show. 8 pm saw the kick-off, as he shambled in from the side. No stage as such, just the space in front the chairs, he plugged in his acoustic and we were off.

SWEET ANHEDONIA

With most of the set culled from Sweet Anhedonia, here was the opportunity to hear these plangent songs stripped right back, without any extraneous backing, guitar and voice and nothing else. With F,O,L,K emblazoned on the fingers of his right hand, it took a while to discern H,E, R, O on the other. I’ll buy that! God’s Only Son, actually from earlier outing, Shadow Land, to start, and was a good example of his lyrical style, invoking a vengeful God, religious imagery through the eyes of a badass preacher; think Bob Mitchum in Night Of The Hunter, and the smell of “death and gasoline”.

Duly warmed up, his uplifting ditty, Appalachian Book Of The Dead added further gothic malevolence to the room, suddenly chilly: “The dead hate the living but what do they know? Just little white crosses on a county road.” Like many of our best bards of bleak, between songs, the singer was all chipper bonhomie, with a wry sense of his own unimportance in the big picture. Apologies came frequently for his fading voice, seemingly more to his perception, any cracks and creaks adding only to the delicious lustre of his storytelling.

APPALACHIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD

A set in two halves, each of around 40 minutes, seldom did he stray from his cheerless territory, which, maybe oddly, only seemed to raise the cheer of the audience, straining to catch as every bon mot dropped from the singer’s mouth, his eyes clamped shut. (In fact, he did play one rousing and happy song, a song only recorded at the insistence of his manager. Ironically, I forget which is was.)

We got Numbers Game, Suicide Of Town and Shine On The Highway, all from Sweet Anhedonia, the latter with it’s fistful of phrases to relish: “Some people grow old here, some people just grow strange“, “The kids they got out here as fast as they could, one down to St Pauls, one up to no good“, “Time heals all wounds, time sometimes forgets“, all terrific stuff, Leonard Cohen via Charles Bukowski. Older songs like Tupelo and Amazing Grace (Slight Return) also got an outing, all to acclaim from the room. Less playing these songs, De La Cour lives them, with an enticing moment came as his plectrum spun out of his hand. Pausing not for a jot, her leaned slowly forward, plucking it from the ground and continuing, in a move that he would have fluffed had he known it were to happen.

With precious little bleed from the bar next door, a loud cheer came just as he was slowing down, as if goading him on for some more. Sweet Anhedonia, the title track, was kept close to his chest, so coming out only as a would-be set closer. Now it was not only his eyes that were closed, with the room now also blind to distraction, soundlessly wording the song along. Do I have to say again how his rhyme of “known ya” with “Anhedonia” is a Pulitzer prize winning couplet?

Finally, uncertain if he had finished or not, questioning his sound man as to whether he should pull the plug, he was coerced into one more, a new one. He described this song, Christina, as being his attempt to write a full story, or sell the soul of a story, within just one minute. Another dark vignette, featuring a returning couplet around what might kill the protagonist, Christina, I guess, not killing her yet. Within, actually, perhaps just twice that one minute, but nobody was counting. Broad smile, and a hint that a new album may fiollow in the Autumn, “or whenever“, and he was off. I never found out what happened in the football.

Here’s Appalachian Book Of the Dead from Ben De La Cour, for a show in his hometown of East Nashville. (I think the East is important!)

Ben de La Cour: Website / Facebook

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