THOMAS TRUAX + TERSE AFFECTION – GREEN DOOR STORE, BRIGHTON 3.2.23
Terse Affection AKA Michael Cotter is surrounded on stage by the steampunk paraphernalia of tonight’s headline act – Thomas Truax.
Cotter opened tonight in Brighton’s Green Door Store to a fairly small crowd, and although numbers did begin to swell towards the end of the set, the sense was that Friday night of ‘Independent Venue Week’ may have stretched the Brighton gig-going audience a little too thinly across the city.
Perhaps best described as something like ‘gothic country’, a listen to Terse Affection on his Bandcamp page provides a pretty pleasurable experience. It’s lo-fi and dark, but textured in a gritty way, with some echoes of Love And Rockets’ less poppy numbers drifting around the edges of the mix. Speaking of L&R, anyone spot that the band are reforming for their first live outing in 15 years in 2023….playing a golf course in California of all places…we, for one, hope this heralds some UK shows before too long.
Unfortunately, for tonight’s show, the track and guitar are way too loud and boomy in the confines of this small space, and Cotter’s undoubtedly interesting vocals and lyrics get totally lost. There is still an atmospheric vibe going on that has the more enthusiastic audience members swaying, but it was only a subsequent foray into the Terse Affection studio work that uncovered an artist with some real appeal.
Myself and my wife and Thomas Truax have crossed paths several times over the years, perhaps most notably when we helped him with his sound as he played from the first-floor stable-door of an artisan metal-working forge to a micro-festival audience clustered in a small back-street of Hastings Old Town below.
He is the classic touring musical troubadour with a suitcase full of music and a million tales to tell. But he is also somewhat (if not entirely) unique in the choice of instruments that supplement his delicious voice and electric resonator guitar.
His ‘drummer’ is Mother Superior, a one-off rhythm-section involving a bicycle wheel turned by a crank-shaft that creates mystical beats by way of complex arrangements of telescopic spokes and sample pads.
Vocal effects and twangy bass notes come courtesy of a bastardized ancient brass gramophone trumpet known as ‘The Hornicator’ – a device that almost consumes Truax’s entire head at one point in the show as he delves deep inside for a lost chord (or perhaps a sneaky half-time sandwich – who knows).
And towards the end of the set we get treated to an outing from ‘The Stringaling’. What deranged mind conceived of this contraption is a matter for Thomas and his confessor to discuss in private… but suffice it to say an air conditioning ventilation tube was never originally designed to make THAT noise.
Should you find yourself lucky enough to be in range of a Thomas Truax performance, what are you going to experience (besides the weird array of instrumentation)? Well every time we see him we pick up another influence or comparison lurking in the show. Tonight it’s maybe New York-era Lou Reed backed by They Might Be Giants giving a nod to Jonathan Richman. Or then perhaps it’s more Nick Cave at times. Or John Otway? Or The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band?
And we can’t help think at one point as Truax pulls of a particular facial contortion that we have just had a glimpse of what it would look like if Jim Carey was cast in a David Lynch/Quentin Tarrantino collaboration.
The night unfolds in a series of stroboscopic flashes that burn onto the retina of memory. Truax stalks the room – gazing fixedly into the eyes of the audience as he drifts towards the stage sporting brightly illuminated glasses that cast otherworldly shadows across his features.
The accusative call-and return lyrics of ‘The Future Is Leisure’ which put the cat firmly in the frame for THAT (whatever monstrosity ‘that’ might be). A whirly-gig showstopper that sees Thomas Truax transformed briefly into as living Lesley Speaker.
And the moment that the star of the show abruptly leaves not only the stage, but the venue – vanishing into the night out of the fire doors, seemingly never to return…which may be because he miscalculated just how far it was to get around to the front of the building and back in through security who probably thought he was a last-minute blagger without a ticket.
There are some songs (such as ‘Full Moon Over Wagtown’) which are perennial features of a Truax show. And there are other gems and rarities, such as tonight’s dusting off of ‘Fat Spider’, that keep Thomas on his toes trying to remember how it all goes. But one thing is for sure – no two sets are ever the same – and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
