Dan Cressey finds acclaimed Alabama-based singer-songwriter Dan Sartain to be like a reincarnated Bill Haley in a fantastic show at the 100 Club in London
Dan Sartain slinks on stage at the 100 Club like a man who hasn’t seen the sunlight in months. Under the gaze of portraits of musical greats from past years he sidles up to the microphone like it’s a girl who he’s going to steal a kiss from. And one he expects will instantly slap him for it. But as he sings – shiftily out of the side of his mouth initially, with his eyes half open – it’s like the 90's, the 80's, the 70s', hell, even the 60s, didn’t even occur. Utterly throwback, Sartain begins to strut the stage like a reincarnated Bill Haley , come to open our eyes to the new music of rock and roll. A swagger creeps into his strumming as he throws out tracks from his two previous albums. As he has shown on these release and shows again tonight Sartain has both the ability to craft a tune, and a knack for thrashing it out. This is paradoxically deeply, deeply derivative and totally unique – while all of this straight up rock and roll has been done before there is no one doing it now in such an honest, basic fashion. As he sings of the man with a gun coming to get him and the lust for young girls he can’t contain it is hard not to be seduced by the deceptive simplicity of this throwback approach. Although it starts to fade briefly in the middle of his musical tirade Sartain finds his groove again to tear through the last fifteen minutes of his set, even launching into a brief Alice Cooper rendition. The suspicious, pale musician who took the stage has vanished. In his place is a wild eyed madman, screaming his prayer to the gods of rock and roll. Amen.