Q The Music Club

Gig Review

Being the scion of folk royalty must be tough sometimes. As Teddy Thompson slid quietly onstage at Hard Rock Café for this month’s Sony Ericsson Presents Q The Music Club, his dad Richard was across town about to appear at The Barbican.

But while Teddy didn’t manage to squeeze a thousand years of modern music into his set like his dad, he proved himself a worthy successor with a set full of fresh and fiery folk.

Opening with the energetic strum of Jonathan’s Book from his latest record A Piece Of What You Need, Thompson threw himself into the performance with screwed up-eyes and shattered phrasing – words pinging around the small venue.

Drinking song Can’t Sing Straight was a highlight, coming over like Thompson was auditioning for the role of Johnny Cash in a dramatisation of Live At Folsom Prison, the band careering through the song as he hammered away at his guitar.

On other tracks - like the plaintive I Don’t Know What I Was Thinking - the band was quieter, as Thompson leaned into the mic, straining out the heartbreak from every syllable while the bitter I Wish It Was Over (from his second record Separate Ways) positively dripped with bile.

After a cover of Tonight Will Be Fine from Leonard Cohen’s 1969 record Songs From A Room and the unpleasant story of the fish sandwich that left his band’s bassist stricken with food poisoning, Thompson brought the gig to a rocking conclusion that mirrored its beginning. After the driving country rock of the album title track A Piece Of What You Need and the Buddy Holly-esque bounce of In My Arms, the gig tumbled to a close.