King Tree & The Roots are new of this parish, but they are popping up in all the right Chorlton niteries already: gigs at Dulcimer and Abode, and now the Friday institution that is Blowout at the Irish Club.
A couple of the faces are familiar already from other bands – Tim Warren once hit sticks for Chorlton's most widely feted export since the Bee Gees, Polytechnic, before they withered on the vine; Ollie Wright has skittered his fingers up and down the bass for years as the frontman of The Nightjars. Now they are allied in backing the rumbling talents of one King Tree, a man from Cumbria with an ear for Byrdsian jangle and an eye for witchy women in the woods.
While there's a fair bit of chat between the lads off mic, they are not here to banter with the audience. They are here to play the music and play it intensely. I'm not normally one to judge a band by their dress sense, but the indications are there in the mixture of cowboy check-shirts and Can tees. This is almost kraut-billy – limber beat combo basslines, shivery and sharp tribal drums, tight guitar lines and melodies that hover somewhere between vintage Fleetwood Mac and The Strokes. It's refreshing too to see a tambourine/backing dude not on stage purely to gurn like a monkey. Their conviction is infectious.
On the other hand, it's as if the Filmore West was in Cockermouth not Hollywood, that rather than wandering into the Mojave desert, those folk rock dudes had stared out over the Irish Sea after sessions at the local. I can see the album covers now. I can see the guys posing for photos at sunset in an autumnal copse in ponchos and big hats, semi-feral thirtysomethings that live in mossy sheds where everything is mouldy and damp but the pristine collection of vintage vinyl. This is the work of rock classicists. There's a faint scent of Top Gear about the place. There's often a kind of sea shanty shuffle going on, but without the Scouse wackiness of an outfit like The Coral.
In the middle of the stage, while The Roots lithely frug about, King Tree is largely static, the slightly diffident troubadour. It seems those witchy women have caused him years of ocean-tossed heartache. There's a spooky, musty feeling to the songs, and while the sound system doesn't provide much lyrical detail, when the frontman booms out “Where are you? Where are you?” on their gem of a two-speed peyote pop song, “Forever Lost”, there's a touch of Richard Hawley, or maybe a manly PJ Harvey.
King Tree & The Roots are playing it straight, but on a crooked pathway through the forest where the wolves and warlocks live - the stuff of adolescent fairy tales, of low-key British horror movies. Shadows in the corner of the eye on long, wintry nights. Memories of the girl with danger on her lips.
Coc Oen
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