“I’m happy!” insists Barry Hyde over a 30-second mock-jaunty piano ditty. “I’ll punch the man who says I’m not!” It’s part of a mid-set tour through an EP of Ivor Cutler covers that Hyde produced last year, but also a concise comic precis of his tormented decade.
Fans of the spasmodic output of indie group the Futureheads might have suspected there was an off-kilter creativity involved, but it took singer Hyde numerous manic episodes, a period of believing he’d died in a cycling accident and three spells in a psychiatric hospital to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Cue Malody, the piano-led solo album exploring his illness, premiered tonight with chamber ensemble backing and a virtual Vonnegut of dark humour.
Describing overdose ballad While We Were Sleeping as “the most morose song ever written in Sunderland”, begging for a record deal and donning Cutler’s trademark hat and glasses for the tribute EP, Hyde leavens a haunting, disturbing and deeply moving hour. The opening Malody Suite puts you inside a disorder whereby “half the person disappears for a while”; and with a concert pianist’s dexterity, he swerves from sombre introspection to tempestuous outbursts of passion, violence and melodic euphoria. Lyrically, it’s eviscerating: “My friends say I’m insane, I’m not insane,” laments Theme; “Who am I tonight, what am I tomorrow?” demands the desperate Monster Again. Taking in dark showtune Sugar – about “psychic vampirism” – a drunken cabaret cover of Tom Waits’ Lonely intended to “make you feel sick”, and the climactic, stirring pop of Thunder Song, Hyde delivers a brave and powerful confessional akin to Daniel Johnston or Nick Drake. A magical malady.
- At Georgian theatre, Stockton-on-Tees, 19 August. Box office: 01642 674 115.
