Mark Mulcahy: Late Bar, Manchester 20 Oct 2005

Before I say anything else, I need to give you a little bit of context. I'm not one of these people given to saying that the latest album I hear is the best album I've ever heard. Ditto books and movies and ditto gigs. I'm no goldfish and I'm not given to hyperbole, you know? Which is why - when I tell you that Mark Mulcahy, playing at the Late Bar in Manchester on 20 Oct 2005 is my gig of the year - I don't want you shaking your head and moving on to the next thing or the next. 'Cos you've got to understand. It came the same week I saw The Fall (the fucking Fall, man) play a storming near two hour set at the Liquid Rooms in Edinburgh. It came the same week I saw a pretty damn great Magnet / Engineers double-header.

But it was Mark Mulcahy. And there is no one but no one quite like Mark. Okay?

Like all great gigs, there's no one moment you can point to and say ah yes: that's the great bit. Greatness runs through a Mark Mulcahy gig the way blue runs through cheese. He shambles on stage (looking like a cross between Tom Waits, Sitting Bull and that tall brown monster with the big eyebrows who used to be in The Muppet Show years ago) with his bass playing and drum whacking cohorts, and they launch into 'Hurry Please Hurry', the second track from his debut album ‘Fathering’ (although not strictly his solo album as his work with the inestimable Miracle Legion amply demonstrates). From here it's a blink and you'll no doubt miss something amazing from a whistle stop tour of the big man's back catalogue: we get stompy, swampy rockers a la 'I Just Shot Myself In The Foot Again' and 'Nothing But A Silver Medal' (the latter of which is approximately 53 and a half million times better than the version committed to posterity on his most recent album ‘In Pursuit of Your Happiness’); there are almost holy love songs (tonight's takes on 'A World Away From This One' and the sweetly sour 'The Way That She Really Is' from ‘In Pursuit of Your Happiness’ and ‘Smile Sunset’ respectively are each worth about five times the price of admission); there are moments in which the audience are called upon to roar like lions as Mark kneels among the throng; and there are glorious cavalcades such as that which accompanied the mighty 'Come On' (in which support band, Last Harbour, took to the stage to offer all manner of loopy accompaniment to a song that attempts to talk a young lady into bed).

But I'm just scooping the surface the way a pool cleaner scoops scum off of an outdoor swimming pool. Watching Mark Mulcahy play is like reading Tom Robbins - yes, there may be much that is wrong with the world, but, in the spirit of Nero, let's fiddle while this whole fucking crock of shit crumbles and tumbles to the ground. I can't think of a single other individual ploughing as remarkable a furrow as Mr Mulcahy - long may his folkie-jazzy-rockie schtick continue is what I say!

words: Pete Wild

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