No record is going to quite capture the experience of seeing Thomas Truax live. For all that the microphones might capture the odd ticks, clicks and whirrs of his homemade instrumentation, it’s not quite the same as the small boy delight seeing the array of Heath Robinson machinery clunkering away onstage. And he’s not going to wander off into the street mid-song either...
Yep, New Yorker Truax is an artist for whom the word quirky might have been invented. While in more serious moments here he laments feeling like an Alien in America, you can’t imagine he fits in many places. (Though it seems he feels a little better this side of the pond – paeans to the free coffee on Midland Mainline not being a US staple). That said, the largely upbeat tunefulness of his meanderings and loopy croonings isn’t a million miles away from labelmates, Misty’s Big Adventure, so maybe he has found a home. If there’s an unevenness of tone, it’s in the lyrics which veer from the fun to the maddeningly whimsical, to the bluntly sexual (which don’t half clang when dropped into in a somewhat childlike record). But if you’ve got a reasonable tolerance for nonsense, you’ll enjoy a record brimming with musical ideas and life. Not as much as seeing him play live though. So try catching him:
April:
Tues 17, Hull, The Adelphi
Wed 18, Sheffield, The Grapes
Sat 21, Manchester, Night and Day
Sun 22, Newcastle, Cumberland Arms
Tues 24, Cardiff, Clwb Ifor Bach
Thurs 26, Bath, Moles Club
May:
Tues 1, Oxford, The Cellar
Sat 5, New Cross Festival at the Birds Nest in Deptford
Sun 6, Southampton, Joiners All Dayer
Wed 9, London, Soho Revue Bar
Sun 13, The Waiting Room, Stockton On Tees
Sat 19, Aberdeen, Tunnels
Sun 20, Inverness, Market Bar
Mon 21, Glasgow, ABC
Tues 22, Edinburgh, Liquid Rooms
Sat 26, Cambridge, Portland Arms
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