Gig review: Hiss Golden Messenger at Brudenell Social Club, Leeds

That’s not much of an exaggeration during the exhilarating highpoints of Hiss Golden Messenger’s two-hour set.

Although he’s often described as a folk artist, Durham, North Carolina-based singer, songwriter and guitarist MC Taylor is first and foremost the leader of the band known as Hiss Golden Messenger.

Taylor’s roots are inseparably entwined with the cosmic and soulful ends of the American songwriting tradition. However, he’s also an authority on earthy funk and hairy bands who never shied away from an opportunity to stretch out into an open-ended jam.

As a result, tonight’s set has much more in common with the vibrant country-funk hybrids of cult heroes ala Larry Jon Wilson, Tony Joe White or Jim Ford than the haunted hymns and stark confessionals that populated Taylor’s stunning solo set on this same stage in December 2019. It’s a testament to Taylor’s rare ability to match rather than mimic the accomplishments of his vintage forebears that both extremes of the HGM brand are equally convincing.

It’s the final show of HGM’s European tour but there is no sign of road fatigue. Quite the opposite: Taylor and Co lunge at the songs with a good-humoured intensity that suggests they are keen to drain the collective tank of any last dregs of energy. The opening salvo - the galloping rocksteady country groove of Rock Holy, The Band-go-New Orleans swagger of I’ve Got a Name for The Newborn Child - in particular maintain a fearsome level of telepathic interplay and deeply satisfying, sweaty funkiness.

This is very much a Saturday night party set, delivered to a rapturous reception that inspires Taylor to praise both the Brudenell and the lively qualities of a Leeds crowd. Sometimes this is to the detriment of Taylor’s scope as a songwriter: the alluring depths and hypnotic pull of Taylor’s emotionally heavier material comes second to cuts that are more malleable to an exchange of solos.

The results can be mesmerising, as on Like A Mirror Loves a Hammer, which collapses into half-formed abstraction that nods towards the Grateful Dead before picking up steam again. But there are points where you half-wish for some of the nuances and economic use of space that characterises Taylor’s brand new, brilliant instrumental collaboration with Cameron Ralston as Revelators Sound System - or the music of Bobby Lee.

Assisted with a superb rhythm section, taped bird song and a drum machine that may have once belonged to JJ Cale, Lee delivers a compelling opening set of hypnotic instrumentals that bring to mind the desert-dry grooves of Tinariwen relocated to the verdant fields that surround Lee’s native Sheffield, or a more benevolent Earth, culminating in a gradually accelerating cruise through Warren Zevon’s Join Me in LA that deconstructs the original’s 70s California studio tan sheen into a galloping, dusty boogie.