Livemusic.fm

Petter Ericson Stakee was born to sing in a band. It’s not just the shoulder-length hair, wispy beard, drainpipes and winkle pickers; it’s not even the voice (more of which later). It’s the rare sense of fulfilled destiny that you get from seeing him when jittering around the stage, teasing out country-rock guitar sounds that are as 1973 as his get up. It all just seems so right.
It is an exhilarating feeling, chiefly because 99 per cent of frontmen, from the deluded to the sensational, will probably swear blind that the band is their calling in life, maaan, their raison d'etre, but I don't swallow it. It doesn't strain the imagination much to visualise Luke from The Kooks hacking away in an abattoir; put Wayne Coyne in front of a GCSE maths class and he'd get on okay; hell, even Josh T Pearson could get a job if the gigs dried up. I’m thinking undertaker, or maybe snooker pundit.
But you cannot imagine Ericson Stakee doing anything else tonight other than playing on the 100 Club stage, swathed in red light. He audaciously adds a hoodie to the classic rock look (with hood up, incidentally - wouldn’t get away with that in Bluewater, sunshine) and his heartbreaking, cracked voice soars like a man who’s seen baaaaaaad things man, things that no guy this young should have seen, particularly in ‘The Devil’s All You Ever Had’ - the gut-wrenching epic that finishes Alberta Cross’s mini album The Thief and The Heartbreaker.
The gospel harmonies of that splendid record dumps it right in dusty, possibly Bible-bashing old Americana territory, which is a world away from Ericson Stakee's Swedish origins and the north east London upbringing of his songwriting partner and bassist Terry Wolfers. The harmonies might be missing a few layers in concert but it doesn't detract from the power of the songs, ‘Old Man Chicago’ sounding particularly glorious.
Elsewhere, Lucy Rider remains a cheerful heartbreaker of a song: ‘Ramblin' Man’ is sexy as hell - a slow, heavily punctuated bluesy one that deserves a striptease - and ‘Hard Breaks’ races through the gears and elicits a very wedding dance from a drunk, balding taxi driver who is down the front going WAHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYY!!!. He gets a song dedicated to him for his efforts.
The funny shape of the 100 Club dictates that you get blasted by the instrument that is in front of you, so I didn't hear a peep out of the keyboard all night, but what the hell, it's not really their fault. And while Alberta Cross may be a bit too derivative for some, your correspondent doesn't give a flying fuck when they sound this good.

Paul Fleckney