I couldn’t pass up the chance to see the ex-main man of indie wallflowers Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci in such a small venue. I was expecting plaintive pianos. Instead, I got paino-led pop songs and comedy.

Date: October28, 2013

Venue: The Maze, Nottingham

Following 15 years of leading Welsh psych underachievers Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci through the harsh indie underworld – save for brief and sporadic spells of success just outside the top 40 (never actually in it, mind) – Euros Childs has been reborn a strengthened songwriter of purist folky wonk-pop.

His solo songs are often deft, daft and draughty affairs, and his connection with his audience is warm and welcoming.

In fact he uses his crowd as part of the experience, awkwardly yet comically announcing each tune’s background story like a novelist dissecting his latest best seller.

His finest anecdote is about his band’s tame Nottingham experience in which they watched a sitcom featuring Linda Bellingham back at their Travelodge: “This one’s for Linda; if she’s alive, well done, if she’s…you know…then…well it’s for you Linda..”, he mumbles in his thick Welsh accent. This mid-song hilarity continues throughout.

With the look of a young Jagger – all chiselled facial features and foppish hair – his ambition is perhaps not quite as grandiose as Jagger’s, but his objective is the same: to shift records.

And so it’s no surprise that the majority of their jangle-pop set is made up of choice cuts from new album, ‘Situation Comedy’.

Now nine albums into his solo career, his work is still laced with sharp wit, over-laden with imagination and doused in a studied, melodic elixir.

With a full band bolstering his uplifting, wide-eyed tales, including a playful flute, he weaves his velveteen vocals over subtle piano-heavy folk-pop/neo-psychedelia expertly. Superb stuff.