 | | Bonnie 'Prince' Billy (pic: Florent Mazzolini) |
It would have been off-putting enough, but when you added to his appearance the sheer oddness of his dancing, a mystifying combination of Crazylegs Crane and Manchester’s own Freddie Garity, the Bridgewater suddenly held a spectacle that distracted from the reason people were there; to witness his much-vaunted music. Sadly, sometimes that wasn’t too bad a thing. "We’re not accustomed in the least to playing this kind of formal situation," muttered Oldham into the expanse of the silent hall, and it showed. The clarity of sound that the auditorium offers rubbed too many of the rough edges off Oldham’s sound. His often dirty guitar riffs sounded censored and that rumbling country yowl of a voice was exposed too many times reaching for notes that it simply couldn’t find. Yet there were still sublime moments when the band came together and the grit and grime of his heart-felt lyrics overpowered the surroundings and hit home. But for every peak, there were two moments when they turned into a substandard honky-tonk bar band, and the less said about the caterwauling appearance of Dawn McCarthy, who’s utter bizarreness in support act The Faun Fables had almost had the audience rolling in the aisles for the wrong reasons, the better. Oldham, rightly or wrongly, comes with a host of expectations, of beliefs that he will offer something genius with every performance. Tonight, he proved he is simply human, as prone to an off day as anyone else. | 
