"My wagon broke down on Uselessness street…", is the first line of Patrick McGrath's first rate ode to suicide, "To Be In Your Heart Again" off his first rate 2010 EP When Black Is Blue, shows up two thirds of the way through his first rate performance at Parkside Lounge. McGrath sings it from the nose up, you can see him straining to reach the falsetto he sings in. The Philadelphia Inquirer compared him to Elvis Costello, but what they meant was his voice is edgy, I think he sounds like Freedy Johnston, but that's because he is an expert at lines line "sad days, sad nights" and not because his manager used to manage Freedy. His voice is pained but emotional, as if he is mainlining pain but only so we can see clearly what he is going through.
Because that is what McGrath does or do I mean is, an old school songwriter as good (though not as proven) as his peers. This man can write a song.
It has been over year since the EP was released and McGrath has been battling insomnia with little nightmares like "Little Ghosts" and forming a band to carry him forward. On Saturday night he found it. Despite having barely enough time to rehearse them, the stand-up bass player has the music annotated in front of him, they are a smooth, cohesive unit. Patrick leads them with an easy going intelligence at odds odds with his definitive happy songs about sad things.
In McGrath's world ghosts send you guitars at 5am in the morning and love is a black and blue rainbow. The songs are hard, sad, scary. But Patrick isn't. He is a charming, amused proprietor of the stage, handling a super-fan with ease and politeness, dealing with new and old songs with the same control. he has the self-confidence of a man who knows his songs are killing us. One tune, I didn't get its name, has a lick so killer I am thinking he must have stolen it, another "The Weather Down Here" is a precise evocation of the way he uses music to rtransmogrify emotion: a strange, obtuse love song.
The sound is a mash up of country rock (one is a ringer for "New Kid In Town") and timeless sing-songwriterly literateness. The lyrics are pitch black and often in counterdistinction to the feelings being expressed. Mostly, the songs are upbeat quasi alt country ballads, but the words are suicide notes to a future that exasperates McGrath by not arriving fast enough. "This is our hit single" he wryly notes and later, "This is our next hit single". They should be. Patrick uses the sounds of classic rock to tell stories and always maintains a hook, both verbally and musically, it is a catchy thing. And with his highly distinctive voice, he always returns to a verbal, easily empathized, hook. An early song becomes a modified jam, a later song,a timeless country roll. They are all consistently excellent.
As a frontman, Patrick has a coiled smartness; he isn't put off by the usual stuff . Despite monitors adding their own rhythm section, a very strange friend interrupting the set, guitars that won't stay in tune, and even me asking what song he is playing, Patrick maintains a friendly veneer: he seems to cut the middle between the insomniac depressive of his songs, and the appreciative leader waiting for the world to catch on.
The band themselves are excellent. Brian Joyce (his second in command) plays one startling lick after another, and his bassist Adam Roberts slaps his instrument like he wants to go crazy. The drummer (whose name I didn't catch) was like a catcher with a real good pitcher, slightly under used.
Most important, every single song was excellent. All these songs"written five minutes" ago", the newbies, were sooooo goood. This is a band, a songwriter, like they used to make. Why McGrath hasn't broken through is a mystery to me.; I'm an optimist by nature, but if the music industry can't appreciate and reward a Patrick McGraff, there is something seriously wrong with the music industry that wasn't there 20 years ago. The band try to decide on a name. I suggest Little Ghost because these songs will haunt you.