Tom McRae

"There's an acoustic cafe up the road from here where I used to pay to perform three songs. In two years I've come... eight yards" chuckles the none-more-affable singer-songwriter Tom McRae. He forgot to say "via Shepherds Bush Empire clutching an acclaimed debut album". Whoops. Oh well.

Banish the words "honesty" and "anthems" from your mind. Accurate though they may be, the connotations that have attached themselves to such words over the years - Stereophonics, David Gray et al, mercenary plodding fuckers one and all - have little or nothing to do with what Tom McRae is and does. Forget walking all over the competition - McRae's songwriting lays a thick layer tarmac over most of his peers. While at times a touch melodramatic, his songs are mostly a fine balance of pensive loneliness, in songs like 'Hidden Camera Show', and piercing emotional darkness, most notably in his debut single 'You Cut Her Hair' - an unsettling ode to revenge anchored by deep cello rumblings and lyrics that betray anger and unshakeable determination - "Live long/See her face in everyone/And turn, turn the page/Start again, change your name/But I will find you still/Move in for the kill". These songs are a year old however, and McRae has new material to air. It doesn't disappoint - the fragility of 'You Only Disappear' in particular is crushingly lovely.

Tonight's set is a back-to-basics semi-acoustic solo show, backed only by a cello and a keyboard. And let's be honest - when many artists whip out the acoustic guitar for a 'stripped-down' number, don't we all yawn and shuffle our feet? McRae's strength is that he's better in this mode than any other. His voice carries an astonishing clarity, skimming melodic peaks and troughs with ease, and tonight's show is not one of those where every word is bawled out by the attending crowd - those who know the words are mouthing them silently, as if afraid of breaking the silence between them and McRae's emotional outpourings. It's haunting and unnerving stuff.