There is something exquisitely theatrical about singer/songwriter/guitarist CW Stoneking. His voice – like someone trapped Australian and American accents in a bag of hammers and threw it down some stairs – is beguilingly battered. He speaks out of the corner of his mouth and even when singing the words limp out, as if chewed for several days before finally escaping and blooming into yearning melodies. His voice was made for the blues.
Tonight’s set segues seamlessly back and forth between the pre-WWII country blues, New Orleans trad jazz and calypso-infused numbers of his first two records and the post-war rock’n’roll stompers of his latest.
The Zombie is a standout from the new album – a sinister, exotic ode to the undead, drums swaying beneath Stoneking’s half-spoken verses, punctuated by the sing-song screams of his female backing vocalists. The Thing I Done detours into thumping ska that would sound at home on a Trojan records compilation.
Backing singers disappear as Stoneking launches into a deliberately nonsensical tall tale about ouroborus eels migrating to the Bermuda triangle, preluding gorgeously electrified versions of Marching of the Drums and Jungle Blues. The audience yodel along on the chorus of Talking Lion Blues, echoing hauntingly around the appropriately faded grandeur of the Shepherd’s Bush Empire.
Through sheer tyranny of charisma, Stoneking forges stylistically disparate material into a cohesive ninety minutes, his unique vocal style and surreal wit leaving their mark on every genre he touches.