Live Review: Jake Bugg, The Creases, The Growl

The audience seemed distracted while Cam Avery of The Growl strummed amiably on his guitar, occasionally adding in harmonic or echoing voice loop effects. The overtone of disregard wasn't helped by the disembodied voice from the audience who aimed fire at the musician's facial hair with a seasonally appropriate Jesus reference.
Meanwhile, The Creases brought in the '90s guitar band vibe, despite looking collectively born in the late portion of that decade. The audience really showed their true colours when the band pulled out a cover of Tal Bachman's She's So High, and half the audience joined in on the falsetto chorus wail.
Jake Bugg is a down-to-business kind of musician. Over the course of his performance his longest sentence strained to seven words, but it didn't seem to be aloofness, rather intense shyness, that kept his sentences clipped and the focus on the songs. Rightfully so, given the early back-to-back brilliance of There's A Beast And We All Feed It, Trouble Town and Seen It All, raising the crowd into cacophonic singalong, clap-along euphoria. Bugg looked confident, moving his gaze steadily over the crowd, nodding his head emphatically in time with every song. On Green Man, he strayed momentarily to saunter around the stage, guitar strings being expertly manipulated, but it was his braying vocals and the irresistible percussive rhythms on Taste It and Slumville Sunrise that spurred on incessant chanting from the audience. Tender moments like the heart-aching Broken, were delivered with earnest honesty, whereas the breakneck deliveries of Slumville Sunrise and What Doesn't Kill You induced mass adrenaline. The encore saw Bugg play his regular live cover of Neil Young's My My, Hey Hey (Out Of The Blue), his polished yet quiet swagger evidence that he's a consummate performer with talent far beyond his years.