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Wool hat pulled over his eyebrows, Damon Gough carries a packet of cigarettes and an ominously full bottle of hard liquor onto the stage. He looks more likely to ask you for change than beguile you with pop. This scruffy little man, however, is about to reveal some of this year's most radiant music. Eventually. After enough false starts to disqualify an entire Olympic team, anyway.
The first half-hour is nothing short of comic. Gough strums when he likes and isn't afraid to leave a guitar part unfinished to take a swig from his bottle. Songs start and then stop for an anecdote or a shift in style. One impromptu piece has Gough looking back over his shoulder, reading the English half of the audience useful travel phrases from a Japan guidebook. "I'm in trouble with the police," he deadpans.
The treatment 'Another Pearl' receives epitomises the evening. After a minute or so of introduction, the band's guitarist halts the song and complains with a smile that Gough had missed his cues. There's a joke and a restart, then a guitar problem, a laugh with the crowd and, finally, a vigorous interpretation of another superior love song. While warming up to play the full version of 'The Shining', Gough explains that his tomfoolery shouldn't distract from the beauty of the song. That said, he puts down his guitar while he attempts to find good homes for a couple of terrapins he won in an arcade game earlier.
Sure, it gets tedious after a while, but how can you stay angry at a man whose angelic renditions of 'Pissing In The Wind', 'Camping Next To The Water' and 'Once Around The Block' so easily transcend the frustration?
Outrageously unprofessional, infuriatingly wayward but charmingly eccentric. Brilliant.