Dan Sartain

27/05/2010

Out to tender @ Captain's Rest, Glasgow

 Dan Sartain
Captain’s Rest, Glasgow
3/5


Flustering and flapping over fluffed lyrics and bum notes, Dan Sartain injects a little humour, drawing a parallel between his botched numbers and Elvis’ infamous 1970 Las Vegas bungling and giggling through ‘Love Me Tender’.
 
One would-be suitor in the intimately ensconsed basement crowd pants: “Love ME tender, Dan!” Moments later another guy is literally bowled over backwards. It would be nice to think Sartain has knocked his socks off – the audience is clearly made up of diehard devotees of the Alabama songwriter, who’s famously a friend and associate of The White Stripes and Rocket from the Crypt – but in truth the bevvy probably has more to do with it.
 
It’s just as well the assembled faithful are in a forgiving, in fact devout, mood. Sartain, who springs into the set with a clutch of songs off new album Dan Sartain Lives!, out next week, is visibly and audibly uncomfortable at times with his own gaffes, but punches his way through the set with self-deprecating jests and his sly, jaggy wit carries the show.
 
Recent single ‘Athiest Funeral’ struts along like a kitten strayed from the Setzer litter, and new track ‘Voo Doo’ has plenty of dark, sexy thrust, but there’s something not quite gelling, and he seems to know it too. The skiffle isn’t quite scuzzy enough, the rockabilly not quite tough enough, but you sense that it could so easily be fixed with the right mix of guys behind him.
 
As it stands tonight, though, it’s only when his bassist – who’s reprimanded at the end of the show for leaving his bass throbbing feedback through the amp – and drummer leave the stage, that Sartain comes into his own, taking requests and banging out a sackful of songs from his last longplayer, Join Dan Sartain, which came out on the Swami label (run by Rocket from the Crypt’s Speedo).
 
‘The World is Gonna Break Your Little Heart’ jingles along with gentle bittersweet charm, and ‘Flight of the Finch’ swings quite cutely, while he gallops through ‘Replacement Man’.

Coming back for the encore with a fierce ‘Gun vs. Knife’, with a Tarantinoesque vicious rant ripping through the middle, he finishes up all apologies and grateful for his Glaswegian friends’ perseverance.

Vicky Davidson