The Civil Wars are one of those bands rendered suddenly white hot in the UK by a classy performance on Later with Jools Holland. They’re a photogenic country-ish acoustic singer-songwriter pairing whose style is just un-country enough to fit neatly alongside James Morrison on Home Counties i-players, but whose very, very faint tint of Deep South gothic also has the hipsters intrigued. They have sold out the Shepherds Bush Empire tonight and arrive on stage to enthused applause and yells of appreciation. The crowd are in their early thirties and upwards, straight-looking, and they love this band and consistently let them know it.
Californian singer Joy Williams wears a flowing but simple black dress while Alabama guitarist-singer John Paul White is clad in full dinner jacket and bow tie, setting off his dark beard and long hair elegantly. The stage set-up is simple, two microphones and chairs, and the duo are cinematically handsome, as if they were off to a ball in a Seventies western. It’s a good look, convincing, and the music is skilfully put together - guitar, carefully harmonised vocals and occasionally Williams on keyboards - but I can never quite get on side. Rather than tiresomely put the boot in, though, let’s begin with a list of good things about the evening:
The Civil Wars are humble and apparently overwhelmed by their success, endearingly embarrassed about selling out the Shepherds Bush Empire – “What are you doing here?” they ask us, “This just makes no sense!”
They have a few songs that actually have bite, such as “From This Valley” with its hints of Gillian Welch, or the title track of their album, Barton Hollow, where White swaps from an acoustic to an electric guitar and tells us he will take us “to where I grew up in Alabama”. He does a good job doing so as it’s their best song, all saccharine traits trimmed away in favour of a hellfire outlaw blues.
They do a smart line in covers, from a slothfully funky and doomed take on Portishead’s “Sour Times” to the brilliant set-closing pair; a fabulously original version of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” and a rousing rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Dance Me to the End of Love”.
White is dryly funny. Where Williams sometimes gushes, he punctures proceedings with wry asides. She dedicates one song to the baby she shyly, proudly shows us, by turning sideways, is growing inside her. It’s a long, thoughtful introduction and White then announces that the song in question is Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast”. The song turns out to be the longing, lullaby-esque “To Whom It May Concern”, instead, but he gets his laugh and it’s a loud one. He also makes a good gag about how suspicious it was that Adele picked up six Grammys… but only after she toured the US with the Civil Wars last year.
Everyone at the Shepherds Bush Empire, apart from me, seemed to be completely sucked in, whirled away on The Civil Wars sweetly emotive southern-lite trip. I felt very churlish but…
The whole night reeked of twee. Williams' persona came across as rather like kooky Mary Steenburgen in Back to the Future III, and together the pair emanated a peachy clean vibe that was more Osmonds than Tennessee (where they met), or perhaps The Carpenters are an even better reference point.
While the crowd revelled in the extended episodes of vocal sparring, played against earnest crowd silence (the band asked for the bars to close while they played) I soon began to find them irritating, candy cute rather than uplifting, especially in the song “Forget Me Not”.
“This is a dance song,” White announces before playing “I’ve Got This Friend” and you can see what he means, that there are the bones of a formal southern jig somewhere in the piece, but everything just washes by, these songs are moods with little meat on their bones. “Birds of a Feather” is typical, with its line “where she walks no flowers bloom” and its mood of winsome Americana heartbreak, but there's not a great deal to actually get your teeth into. Most of what the Civil Wars do, rather than the trimmings, is a bit wet, much too wholesome, and not rich enough in hard content. In fact, it’s the kind of thing my Grandma would listen to on bland old BBC Radio 2 in the Eighties. We used to call it M.O.R. - Middle of the Road - but I have to admit this time round it’s in a winningly cool disguise.
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