A lot’s happened for Chuck Ragan since he was last in the UK at the start of 2024. ‘Love and Lore’, his fifth solo album and first in a decade dropped late last year, proving that he still wrestles with the dilemmas caused by the siren song of tour life. In his role as Hot Water Music’s main screamer, Ragan’s also released another album and seems to be constantly on the move. In fact, tomorrow he’s hosting a BBQ cookout in East London. But, tonight, for a few short minutes, we get to see Chuck Ragan at his finest, stronger and tougher than ever. A year of perpetual action seems only to have tempered him into better shape, with a roar that could shake the Garage’s foundations and a renewed understanding of how to build a set from the barest minimum.
Ragan appears without ceremony, a barely audible “whoah” his only call to arms. Somehow, between that iconic roar and Todd Beene’s pedal steel, a sound that can consume the whole enraptured venue is conjured from thin air. Before crisp and forthright ‘Nothing Left To Lose’ concludes, we’re barely aware that there’s only the two of them onstage, silhouetted against a bare blue wall. We don’t need anything else. ‘Get What You Give’ pits a punchier Ragan against the world. He’s sprinting through the old songs, offering only devastating pauses to let uncertainty hang in the air, passionately flinging his arm back as he beats his chest. He seems taller, more put together, than his last time in London. “Cheers, friends,” he mutters, adjusting his harmonica and you get the sense he means it. “It’s very easy to become more and more disconnected from doing something that puts the hair up on the back of our necks, that’s a little risky,” Ragan advises before breaking into ‘Bedroll Lullaby’, its devastating harmonica wrapped in acoustic warmth. The song bursts with movement, waving an imagined scent of fresh mown grass above our heads.
As opposed to the breakneck speed which he powers through his back catalogue, the songs from ‘Love and Lore’ are given space to breathe and to be fully explored. ‘Winter’ is more understated life as he lets his guitar do the work: we can almost feel the clouds break, sun shine through and the beginning of spring. Already a fan favourite, ‘Echo The Halls’ shines like a trophy excavated from the earth. It’s the reinvention of two Hot Water Music classics, already earning their place among Ragan’s solo standards, which bring a gasp to our lips. ‘State of Grace’ has become so much more now and simultaneously so much less in its pared back form, it’s punk orthodoxy replaced with undiluted humanity as Ragan alternates between roars and whispers. “It may not come from a pretty place, more often or not it comes from a very dark place,” Ragan bluntly shares on his songwriting process. Finally, on ‘Drag My Body’, we feel the full weight of his scream as it drives a bobbing, sinking melody. He smiles warmly at our chorus, his last line a hard won solace found after our collective pain.
Only Chuck Ragan could start a song with “oh Lord I must say” without it seeming cheesy. ‘Right As Rain’ is luxurious in its languid golden steel, before ‘Hearts of Stone’ urges us onwards, expelling our regrets and doubts. Maybe it’s not that he’s louder, even though he seems turned up to eleven: it’s just the roar retains its power to shock. ‘Flame and the Flood’ soothes like a balm, with it’s constantly ebbing message of self reliance and brotherhood. There’s a truly essential quality about his performance, no worse of not performing without his full band, and Ragan’s a performer that puts his full self into every single note he produces. As his harmonies with Beene fuel ‘Meet You In The Middle’, slowed to a stomper at points, he finally stuns us into silence with protracted seconds of his ferocious voice.
We talk about music only needing “three chords and the truth”, and that could well be Chuck Ragan’s motto. He constructs a sound that envelopes you from little except his bellowing vocals, a pedal steel, and a lifetime of lessons hard learned, and tonight brings us the kind of set that can bring you to tears and build you up to new heights of courage within minutes. It might only be one night for Ragan in his constant life on the road, but it’s one that’ll stick around in our memories for far longer.
KATE ALLVEY