The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Amid the pile of new acts that jostles for attention at this time of year, the futuristic R&B makers, electro-soul singers and experimental dance producers will invariably be joined by at least one man with a record collection that seems to have stopped in 1975.
After George Ezra and Jake Bugg, Louis Berry emerges from Liverpool with a boxer’s face and a loud guitar. To be fair, he says he grew up listening to Tupac and only discovered Johnny Cash in his twenties.
Today he’s fully retro, with hints of his namesake Chuck and a real swagger to his riffs on early singles .45 and Rebel. With his rasping voice and the volume turned up, there’s more rawness to his sound than that of other recent old-timey stars.
He’s keen to point out that he’s the biggest working class hero of the lot too, wandering past drab estates in his YouTube videos. “When I was growing up, we had no food and we had no money,” he has said. On the road on a buzz-building tour and arriving in London on Thursday, he should be able to earn his keep now.
Jan 21, Old Blue Last, EC2 (020 7739 7033, theoldbluelast.com)
