“Indie rock from Cornwall, so they say.” That’s what it says on Bandcamp about William The Conqueror. And those words “so they say” are doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
You see, Ruarri Joseph and his merry band of brothers and sisters have seemingly found the sweet spot between when Dylan said “play loud” in Manchester way back when and something close to the John Butler Trio. And when it all comes together on fabulous stuff like “Bleeding On The Soundtrack”, it’s a joy to behold.
By turns, there is spoken word almost with “Wake Up”, superbly understated on “Quiet Life”, kind of funky; and kind of quirky on “The Puppet And The Puppeteer” and above all, clever.
“Jesus Died A Young Man” is most of those things, and it’s ably backed up by “Move On”.
There’s some proper screeching guitar in the solo for “Somebody Else” and if musically they’re in a different place to their fellow Cornish band Wille And The Bandits, then there’s a similar streak of willful independence. Happy to be outsiders, there’s not a lot they couldn’t conquer.
About two-thirds of the way through the gig here, most of The Night Sweats take their leave, and leave just Nathaniel Rateliff and a couple of others on stage: “We’re gonna bring you down for a couple,” Rateliff tells the packed crowd. And they do. “Get Used To The Night”, though, “And It’s Still Alright” (“one of my favorite songs I ever wrote and I never got to tour it,” he says) and a wonderful “Center Of Me” do more than “bring you down” rather they change the mood, allow Rateliff to open up on his struggles with depression and anxiety but also finds redemption in these songs.
Then right at the end of his main set, he covers “Dancing In The Dark” and somehow, both of these things are as much Nathaniel Rateliff as the modern take on classic R&B is.
He is, put simply, all of that and more, and he proved on “South Of Here”, his marvelous new record (released just a couple of days before the show) that he’s as good as there is right now.
The eight of them had arrived on stage at 9:15 and by the time they did their intro and the sax has kicked in, you couldn’t get the thought of Southside Johnny out of your head.
They’ve got the classic American songbook well thumbed, “I Need To Never Get Old” proves that, but they are a genuinely adept band too; for example, when they play “David And Goliath”, the opening track from that new album, he attacks the piano.
There’s some of Elton John about him too, and that bursts forth on “A Little Honey”.
There are quite a few new tracks aired, and “Heartless” is perhaps the most immediate of them.
There appears to be nothing they can’t do, and Rateliff himself rips a full-on lead guitar break, almost out of nowhere on “Time Makes Fools Of Us All” and “S.O.B” in the encore casts him as a frontman-cum-preacher and you can see him as the latest in a lineage of Springsteen downwards.
Of course, praise doesn’t get any higher, and “Love Don’t” concludes things in a warm, cohesive manner.
Pandemics and personal struggles have meant that Nathaniel Rateliff hasn’t graced stages in the UK as much as fans would like (and he would wish, I’m sure), but this feels like more than a return; it feels like an attempt to seize the torch and propel the classic sound into the future.
