Review: Alex MacKeith: Thanks for Listening

Openly paying homage to the current greats of musical comedy – Bill Bailey, Tim Minchin and Flight of the Conchords – while kicking against his internalised blandness as a white, cis, middle-class male, Alex MacKeith takes the tried and tested route for the acoustic guitarist comic, melodically strumming away to increasingly unhinged lyrics.

Coronavirus has unquestionably helped him in this regard, with his opening number an amusing account of being locked down with his equally repressed father, the incremental easing of their constipated love related with droll humour. An instant irritation here though is MacKeith's tendency to mention apparent personal revelations (a dead brother? An adoption story?) and then never develop them further, re-cloaking behind his stage persona, as if presuming the audience's attendance of future shows.

This is a minor bugbear though, as generally Thanks for Listening is an entertaining debut and superior example of the genre, with the comic successfully channelling widespread social anxieties into singalong tunes, while adding just enough idiosyncratic crazy to make himself appear distinct. A nice twist on the stalker-y vibes of such troubadours is that in one song about a female neighbour he casts himself as the catch, despite the tune's dark conclusion, while a ditty about his radical weight loss plan is wonderfully demented. There are obviously deeper, darker waters for MacKeith to plumb within himself but for a first show this is an appealing introduction.