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What David Thomas Broughton achieved tonight doesn’t lend itself to literary description. In fact, I am dead against the idea. A pen is no medium through which to describe this man and his unique mode of performance. But this is my task, and so I shall plough on through the futilities of language and attempt to describe the indescribable.

“Don’t applaud for that” cried one angry audience member as a silence finally fell after 10+ minutes of constant, penetrating feedback hum. This feedback swamped Broughton’s soft voice and acoustic guitar, and was just below the volume threshold of being physical painful to listen to. And yes, it was entirely deliberate; just as important to the performance as the lyrics, melody and guitar-work. Never before have I heard feedback used in such a way, nor controlled with such expertise. Never before have I been in an audience so passionately divided over a performance. People were shifting uncomfortably in their seats, leaving the room and even booing.

At the core, Broughton’s songs are beautifully melancholic expressions of love, sometimes disillusioned, sometimes adoring. But, being the master of subversion and surrealism that he is, tonight he placed these songs within an amalgam of feedback hum, shrieking rape alarms, Dadaist gestures and absolute disregard towards normal performance practice or crowd expectation. “It’s just a difference of opinion” he replied to a particularly strong negative reaction from the crowd, and proceeded to increase the levels of feedback even more.

Perhaps one of the reasons for the particularly intense dislike issuing from some audience members tonight is that the key demographic seemed to be that of the middle-aged ‘folk traditionalist’, here to see headline act The Unthanks, and no doubt shocked and appalled at what this young cad was daring to do to their precious folk values. Although, I am happy to report that there was a decent sized collective of patrons (myself included) who were absolutely spellbound and won over by Broughton’s utterly unique and audacious performance.

Below, I list just a few of the moments which made his performance an unforgettable one:

He cradled his guitar in both arms like a baby. He sang with a deep, sad look in his eyes. He hid chocolate bars about his person. He maneuvered a feedback-emitting amp into the audience. He breathed heavily and deliberately into the microphone. He ate one of the chocolate bars. He sang about soldiers with arrows in their sides, and about not having enough money to buy a “pasty from the Gregg’s bakery”. He swayed and nearly fell. He put on a scarf. He took it off. He performed a duet with acoustic guitar and rape alarm. He kept the entire audience on tenterhooks (both those for and against him) with a minute-long silence at the end of his set. He left the stage.

Raucous applause mingled with boos in an uneasy harmony, which to my ears was a fitting response to Broughton’s controversial and groundbreaking set.

By Greg Harradine