Suoni Review - Michael Hurley and Sandro Perri

Sandro Perri played after Tradition at Monday’s Suoni Festival show at Sala Rossa. I missed Tradition, but he’ll be back in August for a very special Fixture Records show that I’ll announce very soon…(suspense suspense).

Nathan posted about Sandro Perri’s Constellation release Tiny Mirrors a few months ago. I really enjoyed Perri’s set on Monday. He’s an exceptional guitar player and has a very calm and almost formal demeanor, not moving much as he plays guitar and kick drum with the help of a loop pedal. He broke his top string early in the set and had to choose songs accordingly. It didn’t seem to affect his performance that much, besides adding some explanatory banter between songs. The last song was an incredible cover of Dreams by Fleetwood Mac.

Tiny Mirrors made it onto this year’s Polaris Music Prize long list.

> Sandro Perri’s website

Legendary cartoonist and outsider folk guitarist, Michael Hurley played last with a performance that felt a bit like watching an experienced doodler. On some level you could feel the songs moving through standard blues progressions, but every chord seemed undone, like Hurley was moving forward by spiraling in tiny, atom-like structures until the next chord came into focus. Inside his messy rhythm n’ blues style of fingerpicking is a precision; his light touch isn’t timidity, but the clearness of a talented sketcher.

Early on he told us, “I usually play a few covers, but you don’t get to hear my originals very much”, which prompted some cheering. He did play a few covers that I didn’t recognize and a career’s worth of his own songs.

After two encores, I looked at my watch and saw that 2 hours had passed since he stepped on stage! It felt like he could have kept playing into the night. The audience slowly thinned out but a solid front row stayed for the entire show, standing on tables to cheer for more encores. At the root of it, Hurley is a man telling stories, and if we’d ask for just one more story before bed, he’d bring out another to indulge us.

Hurley made weird sounds throughout, yoddling, imitating a crow’s caw, humming trumpet solos, cracking his voice, singing a whole song in falsetto. His lyrics were humourous and strange. He talked about dogs and horses’ asses and potatoes, making us laugh with surprise before pulling us closer for a beautifully heartbreaking song, like The Tea Song, which I found a nice version of here:

The Tea Song shows the precise sort of beauty in Hurley’s repetition; over the years of a career, from telling a story over and over until the unnecessary things fall away.

> Michael Hurley’s website