Micah Blue Smaldone and Chriss Sutherland

The criminally scarce audience at Casa Viva (including the shaman from the previous week) were treated to a double bill of ragged acoustic Americana folksong. First on was Micah Blue Smaldone, with his circular guitar figures, broken voice and spine-tingling songs about vultures and dead love; next up was Chriss Sutherland, returning after his memorable show the previous April. His songs were a trampoline to ecstasy, his blurred hands making the acoustic guitar freeze into a tamboura-like drone, his voice rising and his eyes turning somewhere else. A thrilling set was aptly rounded off with a two-chord, punk-primal version of El Camerón de La Isla, the master of melodramatic flamenco.