‘As your soul tumbles through its darkest night

As the lost ones fade in blinding light

As the road bends hard round to the right

I’ll be singing right outside’

Five months into my dream move to Cornwall, yet this was my first proper live music show in the vicinity, in an impressive intimate setting deep into Penwith, catching an artist I first saw take to a stage 39 years ago (yep, count them).

That first sighting of David Lance Callahan was on Valentine’s Night ’86 at the Clarendon in Hammersmith, West London, fronting NME C86 outfit The Wolfhounds. Yet, if I’m honest, that third on the bill appearance (preceding The Mighty Lemon Drops and headliners That Petrol Emotion) only served to put them on my radar. It was through John Peel’s championing, the following Unseen Ripples From A Pebble LP and the subsequent Wolfies’ shows I caught that I truly grew to admire a Romford collective that soon proved they had real staying power.

Within five years that ever-evolving, cultured outfit (always too important to be written off as ‘indie noise pop’) had gone, David moving on to new territory – ‘post-rock groove’, Simon Reynolds reckoned – with Margaret Fiedler in Moonshake. But by 2006 The Wolfhounds were back, part of a bill engineered by St Etienne’s Bob Stanley at the ICA in London, alongside Aztec Camera supremo Roddy Frame and June Brides frontman Phil Wilson, the latter (their bands initially paired on the short-lived Pink Label with the aforementioned Petrols, McCarthy and Carter USM forerunners Jamie Wednesday) just so happening to be in Penzance on Thursday night to check out David at the Acorn, his first date since a Flying Nun promo visit in Auckland, New Zealand.

It’s now been five years since the last accomplished Wolfhounds LP, Electric Music, David ploughing his music writing, performing and recording energies into an acclaimed solo outing, proving himself once again with three mighty long players sporting his name. And at the Acorn we saw several of those songs somewhat stripped to the bone – just him, a couple of guitars and a clutch of quality songs underlining his craft.

As is his wont, he remains keen to help lend a leg up to emerging artists on the circuit, and introduced a fair few of us on the night to Kezia Warwood, similarly armed just with a guitar and her own wiles, a short but always engaging set showcasing a fine voice and sound songwriting acumen, your scribe hearing shades of Joni Mitchell and maybe Suzanne Vega (check out early single ’Sweet Freeloader’ for a taste of that), this Sinead O’Connor fan also voicing a love of Lankum, her stirring take on The Incredible String Band anti-war ballad, ‘The Cold Days of February’, just one of the night’s highlights.

Kezia’s own numbers impress, not least ‘Coronation Street’, dedicated to ‘the gays out there’, while her penultimate number, ’17 Again’, got me thinking of Billy Bragg’s appropriation and recalibration of Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘The Leaves That Are Green’… then lo and behold led straight into her closing cover of ‘A New England’, pitched somewhere between Billy and Kirsty Maccoll and worthy of both.

David came to the Far West on his tod, ex-Fall drummer and regular co-conspirator Daren Garratt back home, the bulk of the set taken from most recent release, Down to the Marshes, his ‘more worldly standalone album’ after ‘the Romulan twins of English Primitive I and II… birthed via Caesarean section  from their vixen mother,’ and while the LP itself – one his label, Tiny Global, reckon ‘will haunt your days and nights’ – carries the added joy of horns (step up, Terry Edwards, for one) and strings, the essence was here, David’s eclectic array of influences – from post-punk to folk, blues, Asian and West African – coming through loud and clear.

In a mighty advert for an album that ‘makes its own genres and rules’, David chose poetically pleasing closing number ‘Island State’ as his set opener, that followed by the LP’s own starting point, ‘The Spirit World’, as its ‘characters cribbed from Hilary Mantel walk around a Stepford park landscape, comfortable in their sparkling clean apathy’. More to the point for this listener, I have to wonder where he’s been hiding those rich vocals, David unleashing his inner Scott Walker meets Neil Hannon tonality.

Along the way we were treated to his (ahem) co-write with W.H. Auden, ‘Refugee Blues’, new song ‘Place Holder’ and ‘Down to the Marshes’ itself, his ‘walk through the lifetime of a couple measuring the stages of their relationship and family through the seasons on an imaginary suburban marsh, a Lea Valley of the mind’. And then there was ‘The Montgomery’, his haunting tale of a grounded US warship ‘lodged in a sandbank on the Thames estuary, and constantly threatening to explode with each rising and falling tide’. And if that ain’t a metaphor for our times, what is?

Time was always against us, with no time unfortunately for ‘Kiss Chase’ or ‘Father Thames and Mother London’ from the new platter, while there was just one Wolfhounds selection… even if in my case mean the latest LP title conjured up 1988’s ‘Son of Nothing’ opening line ‘Down where the river used to wind…’, which proved something of an earworm on my way to ’Zance. And while I couldn’t really picture old faves like ‘Cruelty’ or ‘Middle Aged Freak’ without bent-double guitar hero Andy Golding at his side, the more intimate setting suggested scope for a wander through the pensive ‘Lost But Happy’ and ‘Another Day on the Lazy A’, perhaps. That said, there are only so many quality songs you can fit in a set, and what was served up far from disappointed. And the oldest song he played? A slightly less wonky, raw take on Electric Music’s ‘Pointless Killing’, arguably akin to Kezia’s first choice of cover.

Other highlights included winning choices from his 2022 debut solo LP, ‘She’s the King of My Life’ and ‘Born of the Welfare State Was I’, the latter including its salutary nick from Bo Diddley’s ‘Pills’. And who knows, maybe next time he returns to the South-West, Kezia could accompany him on that.

And then came the wondrous ‘Robin Reliant’, its final verse quoted at the top, that fine song – ‘like William Blake brought up to date’ – certainly echoing down the street, remaining with me as I headed home, this seemingly rare bout of optimism from our neuvo-folk storyteller, its hero singing ‘above our trials and misfortunes’ and one that ‘will keep singing long after we’re gone,’ those sentiments amplified on a night when my wander back to the car coincided with a joyous glimpse of a clear night sky out West.

‘Seasons come and seasons go

Spring’s explosion and autumn’s glow

Summer blooms and winter blows

You can hear me singing’

For the latest from David Lance Callahan, including forthcoming dates (his next show is back on old ground at What’s Cookin’, Walthamstow, East London, on April 16th, with support from acclaimed Kentish singer-songwriter-pianist Marlody, and ticket details here) and release info, check out his Bandcamp, Facebook and Instagram pages.

And for more about Kezia Warwood, check out her website, Facebook and Instagram links.