Live Review

Mt Desolation – Scala, London

• 30th Sep 2010

Dolly Parton’s quote, “I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb … and I also know I’m not blonde” – that’s country.

Three lovely sisters who harmonise like angels, singing their tender young hearts out about life, love and loss – that’s country.

Two guys from a big British pop band who’d had a couple of pints too many and thought it would be fun to have a go at some country songs – surely that ain’t country?

It is fun though. There’s a what-the-heck feel to this Mt Desolation side project by Tim Rice-Oxley and Jesse Quin, both usually of Keane. And it sounds like they’ve had a whale of a time putting together their self-titled album – jam sessions with some famous buddies, experimenting with different sounds, getting back to musical basics.

Good on them, you might think. But it does smack just a tiny bit of arrogance to expect an audience to support them on this little creative jolly.

And yet of course the fans have. The Scala on the London night of their tour to introduce these new songs (the album isn’t out until late October) was comfortably full. Some there were dress-up-queue-early Keane fans along to see what their dreamboats were up to. But generally there was a pleasant, relaxed feeling in the air that wasn’t so much eager anticipation as mild curiosity.

On support were The Staves, the three sisters mentioned above, who rewarded the punters for their musical gamble by performing an acoustic, often acapella, set of striking, emotionally charged, genuine folk songs. They didn’t so much warm up the crowd as wow it into submission.

Mt Desolation’s offering was rather less consistent. It’s a bit of a mixed bag, this album. The least successful of its tunes, including the set opener “Annie Ford”, seem to focus on being stylistically country, but lack the genre’s vulnerable, naive sincerity. The band launched into their first tune with much vigour – Rice-Oxley bouncing along on keyboards, the bass player rocking out AC/DC style. Which makes for a lively gig, sure, but listen to your lyrics lads – the man’s wife just left him for heaven’s sake.

If the band was aiming for a big, fun hillbilly session, it was a few members short. It was disappointing not to see the “dustbin lids, anvils, bullhorns and heavily distorted theremins” that were apparently used in recording the album. Mt Desolation on tour is a pop band with a fiddle, which doesn’t really make for much of a hoedown.

Their enthusiasm was infectious though. “Departure” got the old toes tapping with its jaunty beat, plinky-plonky keyboards and lively strings. It’s a song that feels more believable too – less of the hay-chewing twang, a little more soul. And Rice-Oxley and Quin provided a quality of vocals and frontsmanship that might make Keane’s Tom Chaplin a bit worried…

“Country music is three chords and the truth,” someone once said, which nicely sums up the better moments of the evening. Quin’s “My, my, my” was soft and understated, and his duet with Jessica Staveley-Taylor of The Staves, “Another night on my side”, was touchingly sweet and sad. Rice-Oxley’s “Bridal Gown”, introduced as a “song about regret”, felt genuinely mournful.

“State of Our Affairs”, set to be the band’s first single, is where this project has really paid off. Without self-consciously doffing a hat to Nashville, it has still profited from the band’s back-to-basics approach. Quin’s soft, shambly voice, the swirling keyboards and haunting strings gently conjured up drizzle and grey, conveying the lyrics’ sense of futility and desperation, while the simple, lonely guitar rift cut through the gloomy atmosphere and carried us along. We were there. We felt it. And folks, perhaps that is country.