Jack Cooper - Live In Manchester
[Briton's Protection]

Rock, arcades, tacky gifts and donkey rides - not quite the West Coast scenes you'd expect Blackpool's Jack Cooper to originate from. But with tunes so heavily inspired by Americana and alt-country, you'd easily be forgiven for thinking Jack actually hailed from the States.

After the recent appearance on the 'Jukebox 45 Series', Twisted Nerve have signed him full-time and a debut EP is scheduled for July. Lazy comparisons to Aidan Smith & Badly Drawn Boy are completely unfounded and ridiculous, his influences and sounds are far from his fellow Northern singer-songwriters.

Jack's intentions are not to create experimental, cutting edge music - he simply writes insanely catchy tunes which you'll be humming for weeks. Something he does rather good job at too, what with such a strong use of infectious melodies and harmonies.

It's apparent several audience members are only here to catch the Jukebox track & a request for 'Hope I Don't Cry' is quickly ignored - an obvious attempt to distance himself so early in his career from a 'one hit wonder' tag, and with so many other quality tunes under his belt, he doesn't have to resort to obvious crowd-pleasers.

However rewarding a solo show may be, he may benefit hugely from a full backing band or the inclusion of different instruments. 'Jack Frost' for example, one of his standout moments doesn't quite have the same impact as the recorded version without the use of slide guitars.

While the venue may be a scrubby, back alley shithole, it won't be long before he's playing to much larger capacities. Marred only by the ignorant bastards who insist on talking through the music - a token feature for any Manchester gig these days, it seems.

Entertaining, charismatic and consistently excellent, Jack's a fantastic live performer but even better on record. A definite name to watch for the future.

7/10