Jake Bugg, live at The Academy

Were the Inbetweeners a band they’d look exactly like Jake Bugg and his two gangly bass/drum-playing mates. If any of them are shaving regularly or hold a full driving licence I’d be mightily surprised. Where they’re advanced for their age though is in their appreciation of Great Twangy American Singers (1950-1965).
Shuffling on nervously to the strains (I think!) of Hank Williams, Bugg & Co. deliver what is essentially a gig of two halves.
While expertly constructed, the likes of set-opener ‘Fire’ and ‘Note To Yourself’ are just a Stetson and cowboy boots away from straying into Country ‘n’ English pastiche territory. That said; they do the Man in Black proud with the mass singalong encore version of ‘Folsom Prison Blues’, which is among this week’s hotpress.com Free Music Friday goodies.
You can’t blame a boy for dreaming of being in Memphis circa Sam Phillips opening Sun Studios, but Bugg is at his best when he ratchets the fan worship down a few notches and sings about his own experiences growing up on a less than lovely Nottingham sink-estate. ‘Two Fingers’ and ‘I Seen It All’ both explain why Noel Gallagher – whom Bugg toured with in the States a few months back – has anointed the 18-year-old as the future of British guitar music. Indeed, the proliferation of parkas and feather-cuts in the audience indicate that Jake has inherited a sizable chunk of Oasis’ thirtysomething following. There are lots of doe-eyed teenage girls front-of-stage too who visibly melt when he launches into ‘Broken’, a mobile-phone-in-the-air ballad to rival Snow Patrol’s ‘Run’.
‘Far and away where they took you down / Let them over to your house / Where I’m broken / Down by the people if they let you breathe / Don’t give a damn if you still can’t see / Still my heart beats, for you’, their hero keens, eyes screwed tightly shut and the emotion first-hand rather than belonging to some elderly Tennessee gentleman.