Thursday 16/06/05 Buck 65 @ Night and Day, Manchester

He is a storyteller, he can create images of everything from life as a small-town boy from Nova Scotia who knows he can escape but can see that things are actually quite interesting if you stand still long enough, to the life of a drifter, travelling around wherever the wind blows and observing, to fantasy such as the lonely Centaur who just wants to find love. Every sentence has at least one word or intonation that just jumps out at you and grabs your attention more than an offy attracts a drunk. He switches effortlessly between amusing – 'Wicked And Weird' (rechristened ‘naked and nude’ for tonight, to many good mental images there) – and the moving – 'Stella', which gets the biggest cheer of the evening.

 

While his words impress so much it is almost impossible to do them any justice in a review, they wouldn’t have the same impact if it weren’t for his voice. This deep gravely instrument that is as part of the music as the records he plays to back it up. Imagine a younger, healthier sounding Tom Waits, with a penchant for a clever rhyming couplet and just as inventive. Who else could nick the rhythm of Rawhide for the chorus of one of their rockier songs and pull it off? And rather than just state the name of the next song, we get three seemingly unrelated random stories involving skeletons on burning motorcycles and punk-ass rappers each with some relation to the chorus and are left to work it out ourselves.

 

So he impresses the already adoring crowd; when it’s obvious at the end, after and exquisite '463' that we’re not going to go without a fight, or a few more song we get what we want. He exhibits his skill at scratching single-handedly while standing to attention staring out the room, then finishes with a touching song about how his mother would still try to smile through the abuse witnessed as a child. It is twisted how he makes you nod along to the beat as this misery unfolds, and still leaves everyone on a high note. But as his stories tell you that’s just the part of the absurdity of life.