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Review: 'KAPOOR, VIKESH'
'Ballydehob, Levis' Bar, 21st February 2015'   


-  Genre: 'Alt/Country'

Our Rating:
W&H have attended gigs in unlikely places ranging from Victorian palm houses to circus tents over the past decade, but we’ve never previously witnessed a show where the performer delivered their set from behind a shop counter.

There’s a first time for everything, of course, and it’s also true that this tiny but funky little venue in the heart of West Cork (at one time a general store as well as bar) is probably the ideal place to get a first taste of the unassuming, but highly promising American singer/ songwriter VIKESH KAPOOR.

It’s been an equally strange journey that’s brought the artist here tonight. Reared in rural Pennsylvania with a stint at a prestigious New England university under his belt, he’s the product of immigrant parents who struggled against inequality and early in his career he performed at a memorial service for US historian, author and social activist Howard Zinn at Boston University.

Influenced by Zinn’s own battle lifelong battle against racial and class injustice, Kapoor moved to Portland, Oregon to fashion his debut LP ‘The Ballad Of Willy Robbins’: a dignified collection of folk-flecked songs reflecting the vicissitudes of life, love and loss in blue collar America produced by M Ward collaborator Adam Selzer alongside contributions from versatile friends including The Decemberists’ bassist Nate Query.

The album has garnered quiet acclaim since its release on Loose Music 12 months ago, which means Vikesh is still promoting it as he arrives in Ballydehob; shuffling into a small space in front of shelves holding cans of soup and packets of salt and washing powder to play to a small, but enthusiastic, packed-to-the-rafters room.

With the exception of one new song (the heartstring-tugging ‘Shireen Come Back To Me’), his main set comprises the nine songs from ‘The Ballad Of Willy Robbins’. Powered just by Vikesh’s rippling finger-picking, they inevitably sound a little starker than their recorded counterparts (which feature piano, double bass, banjo, woodwind and violin) but even without the subtle embellishments, these are poetic, yet pragmatic songs of hard times endured by honest men and women and they remain resonant the world over.

Some of Kapoor’s narratives peer directly into the heart of darkness. On the resigned ‘Bottom Of The Ladder’ he weighs up apparently insurmountable odds and admits “the days are dark, like the peeling bark of a dying hemlock tree”, while on the eerie ‘Carry Me, Home’ (“I rig up a rope somewhere no-one knows/ like the lonely climb up a scaffold”) he leans even closer to meeting his maker. Yet Kapoor’s worldview is hardly devoid of hope either.   Indeed his restless muse often seeks out redemption in the most unlikely places, not least on the tender ‘Searching For The Sun’ and his album’s vivid titular song wherein the protagonist loses almost everything yet is eventually blessed with a deliverance of sorts.

It’s been an unfussy, but captivating set and he concludes it in style; treating us to an off-beat single encore showcasing his high-lonesome version of Berthold Brecht’s ‘A Threepenny Opera’ staple ‘Mack The Knife’. This adds a slightly surreal full-stop to Vikesh Kapoor’s gentle, but triumphant West Cork debut and we depart hoping this won’t be the last time he touches down in this gloriously picturesque part of the world.


Loose Music online
  author: Tim Peacock/ Photo: Kate Fox

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KAPOOR, VIKESH - Ballydehob, Levis' Bar, 21st February 2015