King Charles adorned the stage at the Green Door Store on Tuesday night with what I can only describe as a powerful look.
The man looks somewhat like Captain Hook: waxed moustache, velvet jacket, and I was immediately taken aback by his astounding contribution to the whole ‘how many buttons do you leave undone on your shirt’ conundrum – “all of them but one you say Charles?”… Jesus.
King Charles has been described as an ‘occasional shaman’ who tramples over the borders of cool/not-cool (nice bit of PR) and in a sense this comes across in his music.
He marries both the cool and not so cool aspects of psych-folk and glam rock, and the result is, well, pretty cool. The songs are written both lyrically and structurally in a folk vein.
For King Charles himself though, the idea of glam rock triggers something quite particular in his head, and that’s what he believes his music is – glam rock. Well, all right. I’m not sure what he’s doing is strictly glam rock; I can definitely hear a touch of Bowie here and a bit of Bolan there, but whatever.
What I can really get behind is the collection of sometimes raspy, scratchy, or finger-tapping guitar hooks and solos King Charles often unleashes from his glam rock filled head all over his otherwise quite sweet and romantic songs.
Another thing I really enjoy is the man’s rock and roll attitude; I know it sounds really stupid, but seriously.
The second most memorable moment of the night and perhaps my week – after the whole shirt thing was King Charles dangling upside down from the ceiling, screaming into the microphone. during ‘The Crocodile Polar Bear Song’.
Apparently King Charles is often asked what his favourite dangerous animal is, and this song is his answer: ‘Crocodiles and Polar Bears’. This was arguably his best song of the night, and it is one that has not been released yet.
So while you probably won’t get as excited as Charles did about it, give it a YouTube none the less.And if you do find yourself that excited, please stick any attempts at dangling from the ceiling straight on the internet.
Other highlights on the night were previous singles ‘Love Lust’, ‘Mr Flick’ and my personal favourite, ‘Time of Eternity’.King Charles closed the show paying homage to Billy Joel in his version of ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’.
King Charles has a new single out on Monday the 7th of November – ‘Bam Bam’ – which is not the most lyrically inspiring of his tunes, but it’s still catchy and pretty fun, so well worth a listen.
By Frederick Dawe
