Hailing from Nova Scotia, Ben Caplan is a tireless touring musician in the great roots tradition, and with his windswept hair and astonishing beard looks like he commutes to far-flung gigs via Viking longboat. On stage, with a manbun and Ipcress File glasses, he also bears a striking resemblance to Frankie Boyle at his bristliest. The voice, though, is something else. When speaking, Caplan has the playful, sub-bass rumble of Seth Rogen. When singing, it’s like the rock-gargling croaks of Tom Waits and James Hetfield mingled and matured in an oloroso cask.
Caplan has toured with turbocharged Norwegian nu-folkers Katzenjammer, and they share a taste for rich, demonic, black forest gateau folk – that particular stripe of lurid oompah that can seem thrillingly decadent or dangerously close to cartoonish depending on your tolerance. Opening stomper Birds With Broken Wings, named for his recent second album, is a darkly comic shopping list of self-destructive stuff, a Satanic hoedown. But it is immediately followed by the poised foxtrot of Beautiful, a slinky come-on with traces of showtune DNA.
With his backing band the Casual Smokers on drums, double-bass, piano and, occasionally, melodica, Caplan plays the role of oversized ringmaster to the hilt. “This next one is about death!” he bellows, introducing Belly of the Worm, a swaying country heartbreaker that builds to a deafening white-noise blowout. He can also dial his mega-rasp down to a lubricated croon: the ragged soul of 40 Days and 40 Nights, a snapshot of sexually frustrated separation anxiety, is a hair away from the Afghan Whigs. Caplan closes with the emphatically theatrical Stranger, where he recounts a series of gloomy lifehacks from a gallery of mordant characters, most of whom sound like the Count from Sesame Street. It’s a rollicking end to his energised burlesque.
- At Hoxton Square Bar and Kitchen, London, 7 January. Box office: 020-7613 0709. Then touring.
