Nathaniel Rateliff
Nathaniel Rateliff, The Portland Arms, Cambridge, Thursday, January 30
Listening to Nathaniel Rateliff is like leaping into really, really deep cool water.
Plunged into a moment that is simultaneously heavy and weightless, you find yourself strangely calm, whirling in the possibility of being beautifully crushed or infinitely suspended.
And he manages to convey that on the bleak joint of Mitcham’s Corner on a drizzly Thursday night in January (thankfully, The Portland’s swish, newly redecorated gig room out the back is comfortingly dry).
I stumbled across Rateliff just a few weeks ago – thanks to a rather brilliant friend with the best taste in music – and have been cramming his 2013 album, Falling Faster Than You Can Run, into every spare second available to my ears.
The Denver born singer splices folk with haunting opening chords, the beardedness of Bon Iver (he has almost certainly spent time brooding, drinking and strumming in cabins), the intensity of The National (it’s in the eyes) and wrinkles of good old country music.
A knotted red ‘kerchief at his neck and busting out of a denim jacket, thin strips of black tattoo peeking from beneath the cuffs, he strolled on stage, backed by a wondrous cellist and two moustachioed gents on keys and drums, promising us “a few good depressing songs” with a rueful grin.
Then he went and delivered, almost shattering my tear ducts in the process.
Weaving stories with gruff charm (pools of blood around his bootlegger of a granddad seeped palpably into the room during You Should’ve Seen the Other Guy), his vocals thrumming densely with velvet, knocking out riffs over the soaring, aching cello and then whipping out a harmonica just to giddily break your heart further.
But then, the melancholy – of which there is much – does also battle bravely with an undercurrent that makes you want to throw your arms out and just spin and spin and spin.
By the time they played Still Trying, the yelled words “I don’t know” ripping from Rateliff’s throat, the place was just mesmerised.
First published by Cambridge News.
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