Deer Tick – Scala, London 05/09/12

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Photograph by Anni Timms

A guy called Zach Kelley gave Deer Tick’s The Black Dirt Sessions EP a 5.6 a couple of years ago, so they posted their own review of Zach’s review on their Facebook and gave him a 2.1. This might sound like a pretty stupid, petty thing to do but if you read it, it’s actually pretty funny. They bothered to mock up the whole thing to look like the Pitchfork site (‘Bitchfork’, rara) and, despite yourself you will snort when you look at the picture they chose to accompany the review, lampooning “internet era music journalists”. The detail is there and they pull it off. Somehow it comes across as playful and knowing and not just a hissyfit of epic proportions – essentially this is what Deer Tick do, they manage to pull things off.

Playful, knowing, humorous: “I let my house guests rest inside my crawlspace, don’t let anyone tell you that I’m a bad host” and in the next breath painfully honest and sincere; “I take cover behind my white face-paint, while I battle my bitter father’s ghost”. It’s an intriguing double-sided coin of muck-about-joy-padded introspection.

That said, Deer Tick shows are a party, even now they’re not doing Deervana anymore. They’re an American band, playing American music: it’s all whiskey-wet bluesy folk/Americana/alt.country, the characteristic humour and chaotic energy introduced, and pretty much personified perfectly by, main-man, songwriter and centrepiece John McCauley. With his California raisin tattoos, cigarette roughened vocal chords, gold tooth and swagger he technically is Deer Tick. ”We thank you for your patience and support,” McCauley says to London with a deliberate note of charm and affection, in reference to the years of gigs he and his outfit have seen here. He raises and tilts his plastic cup, flashes a smile and cocks his head. The crowd approves warmly.

Opening with ‘Ashamed’ they throw out a, for the uninitiated perhaps, surprisingly fullsome sound. Immediately it becomes apparent that the music exists differently and yes, probably slightly more comfortably here, on the stage than on the record, (Deer Tick did start, after all with John touring and writing for the best part of a year). The values differ noticeably from the records, things feel plumper: ‘Ashamed’s cries of “And oh, What a crying shame, A crying shame, What we became’ and ‘The Bump’s “We’re full grown men, We act like kids, We’ll face the music, Next time we roll in” benefit particularly from some lovely, tight four way harmonies. The performance is in general a lot tidier around the edges than you might expect if you were expecting, say, a booze-fueled, slightly sloppy louder-than-hell rock-out set, which, in fairness you might reasonably be. They come closer to that idea with ‘Let’s All Go to the Bar’, as the lyrics “I don’t care if you puke in my ride, Let’s all go to the bar, Baby just as long as you take your piss outside” splutter forth between swigs of red wine.

Support act Robert Ellis returns to the stage to join in a rousing rendition of ‘White Freight Liner Blues’ and emotions run high enough for McCauley to give him a quick peck on the lips, which only adds to sense of joyful abandon. The set finishes with McCauley playfully skipping octaves through a solo of the Sammy Davis Jnr hit ‘What Kind of Fool Am I?’. He almost plays it for laughs at times, but again, he somehow keeps that sincerity going under there.

Part of the reason that Deervana worked so well (it almost threatened to be the main thing anyone talked about with reference to Deer Tick at one point, which is probably why they had to kill it eventually) was the gruff, sweaty, (grungey) aplomb with which this band go about things. The authenticity. That carried over, the ‘not-giving-a-fuck-ness’. That, and McCauley sounds a lot like Cobain when he wants to. A lot. But anyway, Deer Tick also clearly understand the princible of a concert as a unique occasion. If the worst crime a touring band can be guilty of is going through the motions, then Deer Tick are a long way from trouble.