Curtis Eller, Grain Barge 27th April 2011

Curtis Eller is a funny man who sings sad songs.  Sad songs on a banjo.  While, very occasionally, yodelling.  (There are reviewers who fixate on the yodelling aspect of the four albums he has produced with his band, Curtis Eller's American Circus.  This is to do him a disservice.   He is a songwriter who yodels.  Sometimes.) 

The Bristol leg of his UK and Irish tour saw a near-voiceless, and so yodel-light, Eller supported at the Grain Barge by his Biggest Fans, local Klezmer madmen (and -woman) Boxcar Aldous Huxley, promoting their new, 10" vinyl-only EP The Initial Proceedings of the Boxcar Aldous Huxley Historiographical Society.  Discordantly drunk-Balkan brass, saw, woodwind, banjo and harmonium complemented or, perhaps, off-set by frontman Clawhammer Xerxes' (really?) almost-in-tune voice and late-prog-rock lyrics: think Fish on Marillion's Fugazi.  Yet somehow, just somehow, it all comes together to make for an intriguing, ear-testing hour.