The last time we saw Lewisham's quirky hit conjurer Kwes. the ink was yet to dry on an illustrious contract with Warp and, truth be known, he could barely be seen across thirty truly invigorating and moreover quite informative minutes. Tonight, by contrast, is a little different: taking to the heavily-branded Highbury Corner hangout The Garage as part of this year's HMV Next Big Thing festival, despite having recently been plastered across the cover of Loud & Quiet it'd appear that all who
crammed into The Shacklewell Arms' dimly illuminated back-room back in November like jittery bubbles jostling for escape from a Coke can, at this particular moment in time, have bigger fish to fry. Or bigger teeth to rot...
Upstairs in this mildly soulless space, Kwesi Sey is very much visible and having painstakingly confessed his aversion to singing before people (be it the fringes frequenting a heaving Dalston hideaway, plus brother or those to have slid atop the treacherous ice that lines the streets to a sparsely populated attic, plus brother) in the aforesaid L&Q interview, tonight epitomises a rather prolonged dunk in at the deep end. Sey instantaneously implores we draw closer, citing the gelid climes that have seeped into an already-cold and quite disarming arena as justification. Irrespective of the verisimilitude of this rather urgent urging, it demonstrates his fervent desire to affront the inherent issues he still patently locates within the context of 'performing', or at least performing his own songs, live. Backed by two wondrously capable girls on keys, drums, and a plethora of samplers they launch unassumingly into oneiric instrumental Canary, Sey romping with his diminutive bass guitar to dramatic effect, its milky, off-white frame jolted about exceedingly vigorously like a child attempting to wriggle loose a baby tooth. It's later thudded to a rather more ruinous tune on the chilling, phantom-like clatter of Hearts in Home that's here freed, funked up and out.
Anxieties manifestly overcome Sey at moments as on the electronica-infused R'n'B anthemia of
Get Up or on "mellow one" Broke, an empowering shard of simplicity itself that leans toward conventional balladry. Perhaps somewhat oxymoronically in several respects, having professed singing his songs to be a requisite element of the trials, tribulations, and general bill-paying of life (that which keeps him 'in the money' as it were), it represents a necessary evil that here sounds almost angelic. Despite the odd lyrical erratum the track cleanly exhibits precisely what Kwes. is vocally capable of and whilst he's contemporarily at his strongest when keeping things intricate and instrumental (
as is oft the wont of his Warp label mates) while indulging in jazzy keyboard interludes, were he to fall unrestrainedly into the stance of public speaking and singing, well, these events and his hugely anticipated (if still illusive) debut would indubitably be as beguiling as any of Friedensreich Hundertwasser's myriad canvases.
