More about: Jake BuggTeenage Cancer Trust

As a preface to the impending lampoon, I think it’s important to say that Thursday’s gig at the RAH was in aid of the Teenage Cancer Trust. The stories and testimonials of teenage cancer patients and survivors were truly moving, and the following in no way intends to diminish the cause of the Trust which made the gig happen.

Now, it began badly when the announcer/MC/Teenage Cancer Trust spokesperson introduced Jake Bugg to the stage with such an inflection that it made her seem surprised that he was the one she was introducing.

I was obnoxiously crunching through a packet of chips (CRISPS, god, sorry) and wondering whether we could somehow commandeer one of the (many) empty boxes on the upper tiers. Our own allocated seats were great, but there was some ornate prestige about the red velvet curtains which I wanted to embody. For some reason.

As Bugg began to play I realised that this ornate prestige was something of an elephant in the room. The elephant in the room was the room (this is not a good analogy and I should stop now). The lush red velvet permeated my experience so much so that it was actually difficult to focus on The Bugg himself.

He began alone on stage armed with an acoustic guitar and such a diminutive stage presence, you may as well have been watching a recreation of a nursery rhyme. As he launched into his first number, with lyrics so imperceptible you wish he came with subtitles, we got a sense of how the night would be. Long and fucking boring. It was like watching the support at a Coldplay gig – even the emotional ‘crescendos’ in the solo portion of the set couldn’t elicit a response from the audience. It lacked the veracity of his circa 2012 radio tunes and felt backgrounded against the dramatic splendour of the venue.

The space was commanding him, commanding all of us. I think, you need either an extensive and prolific back catalogue or to have a really vivacious stage presence to put on a good show at Royal Albert Hall. It is so inherently heavy. Dominant, if you will. And this, Bugg Vs Venue, was David Vs Goliath (the version where Goliath wins).

There was something about the steady backbeat of the songs which made everything feel like it was written accompanied by a cajon in a GCSE music lesson – which, given Bugg’s age when he started writing music, it probably was. It was like being in the soundtrack to a TikTok about going to the prom in Texas, it has that sickly-sweet sincerity the British part of me has always reviled. At this point I don’t even feel like I’m watching Jake Bugg – I feel like someone broke up with Oasis and they’ve taken it really badly.

Mid-gig he ditched the acoustic guitar and donned a black and white fender Stratocaster, which essentially is the missionary position of guitars. No shade on missionary but it is what it is. At this point there was an inkling of life in the crowd. A couple of couples were dancing in the thinned-out fringes of the GA, or maybe they were just friends, it would be rude to assume.

Bugg ended the gig with All I Need. And we had ended up in one of those lush red velvet boxes (don’t ask how). All I Need is a new tune, which, for me, evoked a vision of a money-hungry, gold-toothed, cigar-smoking producer. Someone who would say “you’re gonna make me a lotta money, kid” and then proceed to tell him, Jake Bugg, the kid, that all he has to do is change his entire sound, which until this point has been actually quite refreshingly raw and as far as anyone could tell, authentic, and which had him breathing the same rarified air as Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, if 2012’s music journo’s are to be believed. Throw this gritty, seemingly-authentic image in the trash kid, with a bottle of methylated spirits and a match and instead – instead (!) – winks the producer, wheel in some Ed Sheeran-esque staccato strings, generically ‘edgy’ lyrics and rebrand to a fresh, modern, just-like-everybody-else sound. You know, one of those songs where we ‘only have tonight’. 

Unsurprisingly, Sheeran’s Shape of You and Bugg’s new album share a producer, Steve Mac - a man responsible for making everything from a supermarket queue to a night out less bearable, with a career hit-list featuring JLS, Melanie C and Westlife. Mac is described as one of the most prolific songwriters in British musical history, presumably having misunderstood the idea of quality vs quantity from an early age. You’re better off without him, Jake.

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More about: Jake BuggTeenage Cancer Trust