I’ve not too much to say about the support acts today, I’m afraid, but that’s because I want plenty of space to chat about Mr. Hinson.

So apologies to Grant Campbell, who has a room-filling voice and guitar-caressing hands that many a musician would sell their grandmothers to the knacker’s yard for, but I’m afraid I don’t know his music and didn’t quite arrive in time to form an opinion on it. He certainly has the skills though, so if his songwriting can match them, then he should really be one to watch.

Califone I know barely any better, although Roots & Crowns, their most recent album, is excellent. For a group with a five or six album back-catalogue though, that is nothing like enough, although their performance of tense, broody and occasionally beautiful Americana was such that I bought the album before Roots & Crowns on the spot. They seem to create a sort of uneasy atmosphere, a lot of the time, and then there is a lovely tune which accompanies it, but only peeks through the dense blacket of tension on occasions – sort of wafts vaguely to the ear and then is gone again before you quite know it’s appeared. They are perfectly capable of producing Richmond Fontaine style catchy songs here and there, but by and large this doesn’t seem to be their preference. I liked it though, so you’ll probably be hearing more from them in future.

Califone – Spiders House (the accessible one)
Califone – Our Kitten Sees Ghosts (the moodier one)

I’ve seen Micah P. Hinson play in Glasgow before so I sort of knew what to expect here unlike the rather surprised, but thoroughly impressed, Ed from 17 Seconds. On record Hinson produced one of the most intimate, beautiful albums of all time with Micah P. Hinson & the Gospel of Progress back in 2004. His recent follow-up, 2006′s blinding Micah P. Hinson & the Opera Circuit was hugely more varied: honky-tonk, borderline classical and ever-building wall-of-noise crescendos broke out of him to produce one of the finest, most emotive, affecting albums of recent memory.

I’m not sure how easy it is to understand the man or his songs until you see him play live. He’s unhinged, ragged – exploding with emotion. It’s a miracle, in this context, that he was able to keep his music so controlled and spare on Gospel of Progress. On stage it bursts out of him like a whirlwind, and the man with the warmest, most confessional voice in music cuts loose and absolutely fucking rocks. That fireside warmth is transformed into feral howl, his guitar takes the mother of all batterings and all that pent-up emotion bursts out in a torrent. At times he can’t control it at all. On the brilliant Patience he starts with the actual lyrics – “I’m running out of patience to be fucking with this now/you better believe me when I say this now/I’m packing up my nightmares and I’ll be on my way/you better find me some time when you have more to say” – lyrics of betrayal and hurt, and as the wall of guitar builds and bridles he can no longer repress a death metal scream of ‘die, die, die, you fucking cunt’. It’s amazing, somehow, quite awe-inspiring, and it fits but don’t ask me how. Whatever the fuck it is, he really, really means it.

His set reminds me of the Opera Circuit album a little, actually. This record starts with the deceptively pastoral chirping of crickets, and Seems Almost Impossible is a clear link to the earlier sparse beauty of The Gospel of Progress. By the next song he’s cranked it up, the stomping, insistent Diggin’ a Grave using banjo, fiddle and an rattling rhythm to change the pace entirely. Gone is the fireside confessional – this is now clearly a different animal. By the end of the album You’re Only Lonely builds and builds to a frenzy of guitar reminiscent of The Willard Grant Conspiracy’s epic Let It Roll and, with Don’t Leave Me Now, the whole thing closes in a fuzz of noise and intrusively chattering voices, tailing off into a plaintive, lonely violin.

Hinson, when young, got tangled up with a vogue cover girl and rock ‘n’ roll widow, an association which turned very, very sour and descended into a downwards spiral of pharmaceuticals and depression. As it came to its head he spent some time in jail for falsifying prescriptions and on his release, homeless and penniless, moved from one friend’s floor to another until he eventually had to declare bankruptcy, move into a motel room and take a call centre job. During this period he wrote a lot of music on borrowed instruments, which later turned into Gospel of Progress with the help of The Earlies. And now, in his own words, “this is the first time in my whole life I’ve been anything like successful at damn near anything”. He deserves it.

Drawing this explosion of raw emotion to a close, he dedicates a gentle, lovely version of John Denver’s This Old Guitar to his father. He tells us that he’s done some really stupid things in his life and during that time just about the only thing that held his family together was music, and the music of John Denver in particular. Listening to his albums again to write this review, the ragged, raw side of the music so evident in his performance starts to become more obvious, showing through the gentle loveliness that you first hear when you play Gospel of Progress. It’s only now that you start to understand Mr. Hinson, I suspect. The lyrics to This Old Guitar are here. Read them. I suspect they may apply to Micah Paul Hinson as much as they’ve ever applied to anyone.

Micah P. Hinson – Patience From The Gospel of Progress
Micah P. Hinson – Diggin’ a Grave
Micah P. Hinson – You’re Only Lonely From The Opera Circuit
Richard Hawley – Hotel Room Rather surprisingly, he played this. It was superb, too.