Sheffield’s Plug is quickly gaining a reputation as a formidable live venue within the Steel City. With its constantly exciting and varied line up’s, Plug is challenging the live venue hierarchy that exists in the South Yorkshire town, biting at the ankles of the all-conquering Leadmill like a toddler with ADHD.
The cavernous club with its plush uber-cool décor and massive PA is a more than capable host to the D’n’B, house, and breakbeat nights that regularly appear on its fixture list – it even does justice to mid-range indie outfits like The Long Blondes and The Infadels, who have pulled off stormers within its walls. The acid test, however, will be to see how Plug copes with a gig from these sensitive acoustic-types who, as we all know, thrive on the immediacy and intimacy that a small venue provides….
First up is singer/songwriter Andy Gower. The man from The Potteries had been personally invited by Scott Matthews to be the support on this tour, and on this showing, you can easily see why. Favouring the lone striker formation and armed only with a battered acoustic, Gower strides onto Plug’s gargantuan stage and launches into set-opener ‘This Town’ - a tale of life in a northern town told by a man who has lived, loved and lost.
From that description, you might get the impression that Mr.Gower falls into the James Morrison/Blunt drippy-piss-wet category of singer/songwriter with which the record buying public currently has an inexplicable amount of affection for. Nothing could be further from the truth. There is no faux-sentimentality on display here. Gower delivers his heartfelt songs of experience in a no-nonsense style, straight into the frontal lobes of those lucky enough to be in attendance, his songs doused in authenticity. This is a man who’s lived a life.
The lyrical content of the songs would perhaps lead you into thinking that their author is damaged goods, lamenting his lot in life. And you’d be a little bit right. However, Gower is far from dour, possessing a unique self-effacing charm that endears him with the assembled throng. Effortlessly bantering with the crowd between numbers, the songsmith raises a few smiles on more than one occasion. Those at the front (sitting on the cheap looking plastic patio furniture which constituted Plug’s attempt at making the setting a tad more intimate, but succeeding only in making the venue resemble a mid-70’s cabaret bar) are at one point asked ‘ if anyone is ordering chicken-in-a-basket….get me one too!’. Ace.
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The solitary figure is aided and abetted on a couple of songs by his wing-man, who provides minimal atmospheric backing via an electric guitar and a horse-hair bow. Particular standout tracks include 'Got the Plague', and 'Hollywood', both of which are available on his self-financed 4 track EP. While musically, Gower owes a debt to the likes of Elliot Smith and Roddy Frame, it’s his man-of-the-people/anti-rock star persona that sets him apart. During 'Skiffle', he breaks a string, throws the offending instrument to the floor then straps on a replacement to continue the song, pausing to ask the audience if he’s coming through. All this without stopping playing or breaking sweat! ‘That was all planned’ he told the crowd, ‘we do that every night!’.
For a man who claims on his website not to want a record deal, Andy Gower may well find a posse of A&R men knocking on his door after this tour. His inimitable style cuts out all the clichés associated with his genre – there’s no mysticism, no troubled troubadour shtick, no half-arsed mid-west drawl, just a bloke with a guitar playing songs of immense beauty the only way he knows how. Gower is the musical equivalent of Ronseal….he does exactly what he says on the tin. In his case however, the tin reads ‘contains life affirming songs’.
www.myspace.com/andrewgower
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