EUROS CHILDS | LIVE REVIEW
Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff, Sat 12 Dec
Clwb Ifor Bach is fully sold out as Euros Childs takes to the stage with his Roogie Boogie band. He thanks the crowd for joining him to celebrate the “two-month anniversary” of Sweetheart, his latest, superlative album release. The first half of the set is mostly drawn from this record, including a great version of Machine – “a song about the love between a man and his smartphone”. Sweetheart was recorded live and the songs blossom when performed in front of a crowd. The band provide a nonchalant serenity to Euros’ wiry energy, and their harmony singing is so on-point it echoes 60s girl groups like the Vandellas or the Ronettes.
The set ranges from delicate piano-led ballads to full-on 70s prog wig-outs, via rock’n’roll leg-shakers and honky-tonk balladeering, all married with those pitch-perfect harmonies. Euros refuses to humour requests for a Christmas song, despite having a good few in his back catalogue. Instead, we’re treated to a slightly wonky version of Heywood Lane which is greeted with rousing joy by the many Gorky’s fans in the crowd. Towards the end of the show Euros declares, “if we, all five of us, were a country, this song would be our national anthem,” before launching into Roogie Boogie. Pounding the keyboard with his elbows, sweating through his too-big T-shirt, he has the rock’n’roll intensity of Jerry Lee Lewis fronting a particularly focused Jethro Tull. It’s bloody brilliant.
But between the jaunt and the jape, and underneath the dry, self-deprecating between-song repartee, Euros’ songs deal in pop’s big themes: love, longing, loss. There’s a well of sadness underlying those sweet harmonies and waltzing time signatures. These deceptively straightforward songs encompass the highs and lows, the bitterness and joy, of the need to be love and be loved. There are very few songwriters who so consistently articulate the horrible, wonderful essence of the human heart. However many genres he draws on, deep down he writes good, honest pop songs, and plays them out fiercely, joyfully, and heartbreakingly well.
words ELLIE HARWOOD