Live music review: Marc Ribot - De Barra’s, Clonakilty

New Jersey-born guitarist Marc Ribot received a church-like hush from a respectful and deeply appreciative capacity De Barra’s crowd. His inventive improvisations needed and deserved that hush.

This was a rare and privileged performance, with an eerily introspective delivery. With barely a word spoken, Ribot’s connection was still undeniable.

“I am very bad at introducing these songs,” he said. “Come meet me at the bar afterwards and we can talk about what I’m doing.”

His first words arrived 20 minutes into the show, an uninterrupted three-part overture with echoes of tunes by jazz saxophonists Albert Ayler and John Coltrane, knitted into a series of Ribot’s own improvised rivulets, sometimes jagged, sometimes lyrical, often bordering on atonal, but even more often oozing genius.

A word should also go to warm-up act Paul Tiernan, formerly of Interference fame. A great solo performance, poetic and powerful.

Ribot went on to play some tunes which started in melodic formats that seemed familiar — ‘Love Supreme’ by Coltrane, ‘And I Love Her’ by the The Beatles. Each formal format was then deconstructed, detuned, its time signature altered. In some cases, he would return to the original tune, in others he didn’t.

Challenging, intriguing and provocative, Ribot was a truly unique experience.

Tunes formally beautiful first, then broken into scrapyard pieces, later rebuilt and/or welded with neighbouring tunes, like the demented toys created by sociopath kid Sid in Toy Story.

Ribot’s version of John Zorn’s études from ‘The Book of Heads’ was epic, complete with stomping on balloons, violin bowing and detuned sliding. Pretentious? Maybe a little. Magical? Definitely.

“For those of you who cannot see, there are some balloons down the front here [at my feet],” said Ribot. “I’m telling you that so you don’t get frightened.” Bang. Bang. Bang.

One thing common to the classical and jazz tunes, none of them was intended for steel string Gibson acoustic guitar.

Ribot forces you to rethink, reimagine a different kind of beauty. I’m slow to revert to stereotypes like ‘crazy genius’, but this mad professor comes close.

No wonder the likes of Tom Waits and Elvis Costello sought him out. And no, he didn’t play any of their tunes ... as far as I could tell.