It's not customary to trash a venue's defining legend on your first visit, but then Benjamin Booker seems to have only so much time for polite convention. "We heard that Oasis were discovered here," the young New Orleans-based Virginian drawls to a transfixed King Tut's, after several songs of harum-scarum, punk-fired blues rock. "Fuck that band," he snaps, to several cheers. "They're the worst fucking band." Later, when one joker requests Wonderwall, Booker unhesitatingly flips him a middle finger with a withering scowl.
Trading tremolo and fuzz-encrusted licks on a red Epiphone Riviera at the head of a tight trio also featuring Max Norton on drums and mandolin and Alex Spoto on bass and fiddle, Booker is hardly anathema to the Gallaghers' cherished "proper music". But there's a sense throughout this electrifying, occasionally chaotic set of old sounds being youthfully ripped up and restitched anew. His guitar playing suggests Chuck Berry raised on Nirvana. His vocals are crooned and roared soulfully but inwardly, like Otis Redding singing in the Vic Reeves club style.
Booker and his band's playing is contrastingly, thrillingly fluent, possessing the fiery potency of the Alabama Shakes on Kids Never Growing Older, and a Strokes-y urgency on the superb Violent Shiver. One guy in the front row loves it all so much he buys Booker a whisky big enough to share with his bandmates, at roughly which point things go a bit haywire. Have You Seen My Son? crumples into a drawn-out noise jam, during which Booker hands his still loudly feedbacking guitar to a bemused-looking spectator before pretending to hang himself with his mic cable.
When Booker and co re-emerge for an encore with people already trickling out the door, they look to have overestimated their welcome a little. But the rousing sprint of Old Hearts, and the mandolin and fiddle attired black-eyed bluegrass of By the Evening tie off the loose ends of this at times frayed show with unlikely decorum.
• At Digital, Newcastle (0191-261 9755), 9 September. Tour details: benjaminbookermusic.com
