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Rating: Once I went to Pistoia to a National concert.
"And what does that have to do with anything?" my young readers might ask.
So, I was saying, I went to Pistoia to a National concert and they spent half the concert playing new songs from an album that hadn't been released yet.
What a drag: people were turning their backs to the stage, chatting, going to get a beer for 6 euros, spilling half of it on the way back, swearing. But yes, there wasn't the enthusiasm that a "Pink Rabbits" (complete with a flash mob) or the little shivers of an "About Today" would give.
Anyway, in general, I remember it as a pretty lukewarm concert, at times boring, so much so that I think I didn’t even listen to the album that came out later. This fact made me think: maybe we don’t really go to many concerts to listen to the band, but to take home a souvenir of a favorite song, perhaps watering down the overpriced beer mentioned earlier with a few tears. Or maybe it's just me, I don't know. Or perhaps, in that case, the new songs simply didn’t make an impression.
"So what does Micah P. have to do with it?" my attentive followers will insist.
I saw Micah P. Hinson in 2018 in Padua: it was a very unexpected pre-Christmas gift from my sweet other half. It was a concert I had hoped to see for years, and I didn’t even know he was playing there that night. Anyway, when I think about it, I remember a very cold evening, not just because we were indoors but had to wear our coats, but also because there were few people in a huge warehouse and they were all fairly disinterested.
Yet Micah has rare gems in his repertoire and a profoundly moving voice that floors you. And indeed, I cried on "The Day The Volume Won," and I'm not ashamed to say it, and I think there was also a dangerously touching "Drift Off to Sleep," not to mention the beautiful "Beneath The Rose." But still, you could see he wasn't inspired at all, trying to say something between songs, he even talked about his guns (Texan...), the fact that people mistook his wife for his mother, and so on. But he couldn’t find any interaction, maybe people didn’t even understand English. When he invited requests from the audience, I was too shy to ask for “The Day that Texas Sank etc.,” from my favorite album, and I still regret it.
Unlike the National, I remember that as a lovely evening, albeit in some sense bitter, incomplete. After all, maybe we always expect those we go to hear to be always lively and spirited and/or very sad, depending on the genre, and to tear out our hearts or pants, always depending on the genre.
"So what does Villa Manin have to do with it?"
You guys are such nags, my pestering companions.
I’ll tell you straight and without exaggeration: Micah P. Hinson at Villa Manin was one of the most beautiful, intimate, and intense concerts I've ever seen.
Part of it was surely due to the 16th-century villa behind us, the pines in front of the park where we sat, the late afternoon cicadas, the warmth that wasn’t too much, and a sunset. And a good part of the credit goes to the absence of another bland Italian singer-songwriter who was supposed to take up half the concert but ended up getting sick.
This time, Micah was inspired. Very much so. He sat, dressed in white, with a Texan hat and an improbable braid, on the stage, with a guitar held together with tape, and immediately started with a lullaby, one of the many he’s written, that silenced (almost) the entire audience. I don’t know it: it’s from the new album, he tells us, and from the album that’s about to come out he plays some other songs too. All of them beautiful: they talk about a God who isn’t there, a Jesus who disappointed, a youth that’s passed, even though Micah isn’t that old. Surely he was marked by twelve years in the company of heroin, a divorce he tells us something about (yes, the famous Ashley…), an overly Christian upbringing, and the pandemic that he talks about in lengthy chats between songs. He talks a lot, tells a lot of things, which is something I very much enjoy. He even mentions the previous evening where the audience had practically ignored him and is amazed that so many people had traveled several kilometers to see him that night, and he is genuinely grateful. Meanwhile, he keeps putting one cigarette after another in his mouthpiece.
Anyway, you can tell he’s doing well, I see him better than in 2018, and he confirms it himself in words, and with songs that raise expectations for the work that is about to come out and that I can’t wait to hear.
Apart from the new songs, some covers: a "Tinsel Towns" by Destroyer that I didn’t know (and the original I later went to find I didn’t like), "To Ramona" by Bob Dylan, the traditional "500 Miles" to close.
And then, from his own, standouts include "Take off that Dress for Me," "God is Good." I listen again to "Beneath The Rose," even though he tells us that he didn’t like it for a long time, "Drift Off to Sleep" and another lullaby ("A Million Light Years").
Do we care that there weren’t big lights and sound system? I’d say no.
Do we worry that he keeps forgetting the guitar? Even less.
And that his voice breaks every now and then? On the contrary, it’s even more beautiful.
But did he play "The Day That Texas etc."? Unfortunately not, but it’s alright.
Not even the smell of bug spray, the pine needles pricking through jeans, or the screaming kids running wild at an acoustic concert could spoil it... No, indeed, they almost made me pay homage to the name of the city we were in, but I’ll save my plans for the extinction of humanity for another review.
In short, if it’s not clear: beautiful.
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