Micah P. Hinson – Bush Hall, London 16/07/08

25 July 2008, 10:08 | Written by Emily Moore

(Live)

Live, Micah P. Hinson sounds very unlike his records, while at the same time sounding exactly as you’d expect. Without the gorgeously layered strings, organ, vocals and feedback you’ll hear on his albums (which, as he points out, would require “like, a 15-piece band” to recreate), his performance is a stark affair. Tonight, his gravelly growl is alternately accompanied by electric guitar, bass and drums, or just his own six strings. The songs are both more fragile and more robust than they are on recent LP Micah P. Hinson & the Red Empire Orchestra – like a glass skyscraper stripped to a mesh of steel girders, or a leaf that’s been nibbled down to the lace of its wiry veins.

Hinson steps out alone, besuited and bespectacled, his guitar riding unfeasibly high under his arm. The sold-out crowd is quiet but focused through the gentle but relentlessly cycling verses of single “When We Embraced”. But when a drummer and bassist emerge for “Diggin a Grave”, Hinson switches to electric guitar and visibly crackles with energy. They segue into a fuzzy, apocalyptic version of “You Will Find Me”, bursting with an intensity and sheer force reminiscent of last month’s tinnitus-inducing appearance from My Bloody Valentine. Hinson’s anguished vocals are buried in the years of pain he’s suffered so famously. “Tell Me It Ain’t So” continues the sonic assault, sliding back and forth between aggression and near-silence. Hinson pushes his voice to breaking in a hoarse scream, then dies back to a croak.

Between songs, though, there’s no shortage of banter. He’s delighted to point to his serenely beautiful wife all night, who sits stage-side like some enigmatic sphinx. Songs are dedicated to her, or explained to recall the dark days before they’d met. “Sunrise Over the Olympus Mons” is necessarily shortened, its climax of endlessly rising reverb impossible to reproduce. Hinson apologises for cutting short the album’s most euphoric, transcendent moment, which he calls the “massive cock-rocking solo”. He explains, with relish, “It’s kinda Poison. Me throwing up all over my shirt. On top of a big cat. On the edge of the Grand Canyon. With a helicopter circling around. In a codpiece. Do y’all know what a codpiece is? Aww, maybe it’s better you don’t…”

Hinson squeezes two songs into his brief encore. John Denver’s “This Old Guitar” is played straight to his wife: “This old guitar gave me my lovely lady, it opened up her eyes and ears to me/It brought us close together and I guess it broke her heart”. It’s gorgeous and moving, but the air is heavy with unfinished business; murmurs build into a clamour, a single word repeated with ever greater urgency. At last “Patience” bursts forth. The crowd rumbles in satisfaction, but Hinson can’t hear it. We can barely hear ourselves. His voice, long past cracking or screaming, rubs against the guitar’s demonic fuzz and feedback like sandpaper. Through the last few bars his hands and throat and body strain and contort at the edge of physical capability. Whether he’s exorcising his demons, or fated to relive them every time he steps on stage, is anyone’s guess.

Links
Micah P. Hinson [myspace]

More photographs here.