CityLife

Get Cape Wear Cape Fly @ Academy 2

04/04/08

WHEN you've been hailed as the 21st century Billy Bragg and worked harder than most artists of your genre, touring like a whirling dervish, to gain the respect of the 'industry', you'd hope there'd be some sort of pay off.

Let's hope it's in the post, because for Sam Duckworth, aka Get Cape Wear Cape Fly, tonight was another weary step in the right direction, but needlessly so weary.

Manchester has always been good hunting ground for a songwriter craving a bit of confidence by the bolshy encouragement when someone of Sam's musical nobility comes to town, especially on a Friday night.

Sadly, for all concerned the audience is a pretty soulless bunch.

It took until four songs into the set with 'Eye Spy' from his impressive debut 'Chronicles of a Bohemian Teenager' for the crowd to really wake up, and even then it was a distracted reaction.

In that time, we'd seen the opener 'Chronicles..' and two new tracks from 'Hows and Whys', album number two, including the uber drum'n'bass saturated Monster Clip.

The best moments of tonight are during 'Glass Houses', which has a belting chorus, the soulful' Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly', which gets the biggest reaction from the sterile audience and 'Once More With Feeling'.

Superb

Lyrically, Get Cape is superb.

He's got something to say and regardless of his revolutionary perspective or humanist approach, it's credible and he says it well. But the drum'n'bass synthetics plague his songwriting and stink of overproduction.

Sam's fusion of emo-indie-punk rock - whatever you want to call it - and dance worked for album number one, but the trouble is everyone and his mate has caught onto that now.

And while dragging in a legend like Nitin Sawhney for his second album to give his dance edge a more worldly-wise flavour, may boost Sam's credibility, it's actually been a step away from his songwriting core, which needs neither trumpets or samples.

Sam Duckworth is much like a Essex version of our very own Badly Drawn Boy, he's composer of fine melodies and poetry, but maybe at the ripe age of 21 he's simply blasting the audience with sound so they move, rather than seeking the sound that moves them.

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