White Fence
– KRAAK GALLERY, MANCHESTER –
One-man psychedelic troubadour Tim Presley aka White Fence arrives with band in tow including the surprise addition of Cate Le Bon to a sold out Kraak Gallery. This much-anticipated gig holds extra interest for many of the tonight’s crowd with lip-smacking prospect of Ultimate Paintings in support.
Ultimate Paintings comprising both Jack Cooper from Mazes and James Hoare of Veronica Falls/Proper Ornaments and their eponymous album on über cool Trouble In Mind records cuts a fine line between the sparse melody of Velvet Underground, combined with the slacker rock element of Pavement. On stage opening with the song, ‘Ultimate Paintings’ James Hoare’s sinewy guitar riffs match deliciously with Jack’s soft vocals.
Swapping vocals throughout their set and showcasing their debut album the band at times I think play within themselves and are a tad polite sounding. Fortunately they truly hit their oeuvre on final song ‘Ten Street’ stretching the songs original template as they build the song to a fitting climax.
White Fence then arrives on stage fresh from their BBC 6music set with Marc Riley and with a cool laconic swagger. Tim Presley who resembles a young Jeff Beck (or as one fan I overheard suggest 60s film icon Warren Beatty) with his feather cut strides on stage and wastes no time with his excellent backing band to fly through his prolific back catalogue with particular focus on recent album For The Recently Found Innocent.
On record, the chopped up lo-fi trippy psychedelic textures are more pronounced, whilst live the songs are let loose as set opener ‘Chairs in the Dark’ demonstrates. Their sound beefed up with a leaner energy and garage sound. This soon segues into the dark delicious bubble-gum ‘pop-art’ attack of ‘Like That’ and ‘Arrow Man’. For me there is a touch of the Ray Davies about Tim in his lyrical flourishes and in particularly ‘Arrow Man’ would fit well with many of the Kinks more raucous moments.
Elsewhere the ghost of Arthur Lee stalks majestically over ‘Wolf Gets Red Face’ and the band gel nicely throughout with Cate Le Bon providing fine rhythm accompaniment to Tim’s sonic guitar salvos.
The final few songs including ‘The Light’ go by in a giddy blur of loud guitars, pummelling drums and swamped vocals, and as one fan shouts out in their football style serenade, “there is only one Tim Presley” and I along with the vast majority of tonight’s crowd cherish this.
Overgrown indie kid with a penchant for americana, psych and weird folk.
