Joel Morris doesn’t look like a star. With his thick black glasses and sensible cropped hair, he’s just the average bloke at the bus stop. You wouldn’t look twice, but tonight all eyes are on him.
But, then, nothing much makes sense about [a]Candidate[/a]. They might look more at home in a dingy Camden pub, but The Spot Bar is a tiny, grand back room with ornate murals painted on the ceiling. You might expect them to churn out an average jangly indie tune, but we can only hear strains of sweet, chirpy country from the stage. And, even more bizarrely, every ounce of Joel‘s nerdiness only adds to his considerable charm.
Especially as [a]Candidate[/a] themselves also capture the precarious balance between awkwardness and shy elegance in every song. They make the sort of calm, uplifting music you need to take refuge in after the worst day of your life. With no dramatic moves or staggering surprises, their darkly beautiful tunes are simply left cowering behind swaying acoustic Teenage Fanclub guitars.
On ‘Leader’, the shakers come out like seven year olds in a music class and on the gorgeously unpretentious ‘If You Want Your Daughter’, Joel solemnly brandishes a child’s Casio to play note-by-note as if it were a funeral organ. It’s like Folk Implosion refusing to take themselves seriously.
And as a final, unexpected twist to the night, we take that very seriously indeed.