Where there's a Will, there's a way

BILL RYDER-JONES / SWEET BABOO, 18TH MARCH 2024, CARDIFF CLWB IFOR BACH

Stephen Black aka Sweet Baboo confesses to Clwb's early-doors crowd that, as he gets older, he's increasingly distracted from creative pursuits by pointless chores and is finding it harder to be arsed to write new songs - but he's got a couple and is using tonight as an opportunity to conduct some market research. Should he retain the middle eight? Can he get away with a line about wanting to find time to read Roy Keane's autobiography? Are both songs as good as his older material? Our survey says yes.

A perennial exception to the rule that all singer-songwriters armed with an acoustic guitar must be arse-numbingly boring, Black is part musician, part deadpan stand-up. His lyrics take unexpected turns, and his songs adopt unusual perspectives. One, for instance, finds him tenderly reassuring his neighbour's dog that they'll go out for a lockdown walk again tomorrow. Another features a tape machine salvaged from scrap that works when jammed with a piece of rubber, and a flute solo - "like Lizzo, or Jethro Tull" - that (he explains) requires him to down guitar because he's too cheap to pay for a full band.

Midway through 'Clear Blue Skies', Black pauses to note that this is the point at which he normally flies a papier-mache rocket over the audience's heads before setting off the fireworks, but that Bill Ryder-Jones has specifically stipulated no pyrotechnics. No matter - none needed.

The same goes for the headliner himself. Ryder-Jones recently told the Quietus' Patrick Clarke how playing the material from 2018's Yawn made him miserable, but tonight, performing the majority of new LP Iechyd Da to a sold-out crowd in the Welsh capital, he appears completely at ease. As the title of the album's lead single 'This Can't Go On' suggests, he seems to have drawn a line in the Wirral sand: it's time to come to terms with a tempestuous personal past, look forwards and - with cautious optimism - move on.

He apologises that the quality of his between-song patter has gone downhill since cutting back on drinking, but that's hardly borne out by the evidence - whether he's playfully chastising the audience for reticence of response or expressing mock irritation at seated, Spillers T-shirted guitarist Liam Power stealing the limelight. The intra-band dynamics and rapport are strong, Ryder-Jones joking about their WhatsApp group debate on when the various members should be introduced, "like it's a given".

With Ryder-Jones, there's never any image or artifice (his rugby shirt and straggle of hair are suggestive of someone who's peeled himself off the sofa to perform). That honesty is reflected on the open-hearted, frank, romantic Iechyd Da, which draws on folk, Americana and Merseybeat to form a companion-piece to 2013's A Bad Wind Blows In My Heart.

Like the record, tonight's set starts slowly, with 'I Hold Something In My Hand', but it's on 'If Tomorrow Starts Without Me' that everything really begins to click. A solo rendition of 'Seabirds' is met with reverential silence, other than the sound of rapt punters quietly shifting their feet on the sticky floor, and 'Thankfully For Anthony' enables Ryder-Jones to pay touching tribute to the friend who helped him out of a dark place.

As the evening reaches its finale, 'Two To Birkenhead', a pitch-perfect Pavement impression from 2015's West Kirby County Primary, is sandwiched between Iechyd Da's two cinematic masterpieces, 'Nothing To Be Done' and the aforementioned 'This Can't Go On'. And, with Clwb's curfew bringing the curtain down without an encore, it can't. If only it could.