 | | Newton Faulkner |
Duality is the theme of the night: a theme that speaks in both plaintive and humorous terms. The dreadlocked 22-year-old stands smiling, eyes down, and after a heart-warmingly faithful rendition of Massive Attack’s Teardrop, picks up an old, battered classical guitar, holds it to his chin, and wryly proclaims: “I’m not going to lie to you... the thing I’m going to do next is a little weird.” Faulkner, it seems, was never content to simply rely upon his accomplished finger-style ability, instead choosing to draw out syncopated rhythms by tapping, slapping and scratching the body of his guitar mid-flow. There’s glimpses of Dylan, Sting, or even, believe it or not, Limp Bizkit, yet despite these momentary reflections, Faulkner’s deeply percussive guitar style and extraordinary vocal range screams out as being something that is definitively fresh. Sweeping quickly to what has already become a signature track, the deep-country-rap guitar arpeggio of UFO seems to bewitch many within the crowd into not even registering Faulkner’s tongue-in-cheek lyrics. He proceeds to scat and tap his way through a flawless set in front of an audience who, captivated, sit and stand on equal terms. Halfway through, Faulkner commented: “Oh, by the way, for any of you that have just arrived... I’m not massive!” Yet for a young artist who is as comfortable performing his growing stable of songs as he is taking five minutes to showcase a bizarre new genre, labelled ‘acoustic-jungle’, it’s a statement he won’t be able to repeat for very long. |
