A post-Valentine’s piece about Kevin Tihista

LONDON, ENGLAND – This is the sound of a breaking heart. No crash. No boom. Not even a burp of stormy weather from the heavens. Only a strummed guitar and a voice that threatens to crack up with every word, holding on just long enough to clamber on to the next note and the next. And the next…until the song is over.

Applause.

The singer doesn’t look up when he gives his thanks, apparently addressing it to every one of us gathered here tonight at the Water Rats Club in London. It’s a small crowd – about 20-30 people including members of support acts Michelmas and Absentee. Occasionally, the door separating the gig area and the pub opens and the sounds of chatter and bonhomie – aided in no small part by the cheap price of a pint of beer – blow in with the cigarette smoke.

"The next song’s gonna be…"

"Lose The Dress!" yells a man from the audience.

"Yeah, that sounds good…the next song’s "Lose The Dress"."

"Lose my dress!" offers the woman beside me. She’s in a slinky red number that couldn’t possibly be enough protection against the cold climate of London in the fall.

For the first time since taking the stage, the singer – Chicago-based singer/songwriter Kevin Tihista — looks up and gives a wry smile. Before it fades, he darts a look at his girlfriend Tonya watching in the audience, her face a mirror of his love. He starts to sing:

"I know this is the time/I’ve got a conscience that could stop on a dime…"

Couples draw a bit closer and sway with the music. Those without dates move a bit closer to the stage. No one is sitting down.

"Oh honey, I love you the best/So what’s it gonna take for you to lose the dress."

It’s clear to whom he’s singing it for. Over the course of three albums, Tihista’s made every song – even every note and word – breathe Tonya’s name. If this is true, they’ve been through a lot.

After the last chord, Tihista looks at Tonya again and it seems that she’s understood.

"I don’t know tonight and this place just felt right," Tihista tells me after the gig. The U.K.- based music publication Uncut has characterized Tihista as a fragile genius and compared him to the likes of Brian Wilson. It was a surprise that he was so friendly towards me when I introduced myself to him in the men’s room – surely one of the worst places a fan could choose to talk to their fave pop idol. But the opportunity presented itself as I was relieving myself at the urinal. "Damn the torpedoes," I thought to myself. Luckily, it paid off and we had a great chat while washing hands. "Come upstairs and I’ll introduce you to my girlfriend Tonya," he tells me. I can’t believe my luck.

Rejoining my wife, I tell her about meeting Tihista and Tonya. I relate how enthused they were when I told them we were on our honeymoon. She looks bored: she loves the music but not enough to like going to gigs. She doesn’t like the smoke, the crowds and the effort it takes to even get to the venue. For the sake of love though, she accompanies me but refuses to take part in any activity that might mark her out as a groupie. "The horror," I can read in the mortified expression on her face every time I approach anyone I hold in high regard. (That’s putting it mildly. I am a very, very sad man.)

If there’s one song I would have to pick as my favorite, my answer would Sucker from Tihista’s debut "Don’t Breathe a Word." Sure, there are artists that I admire more like David Bowie, Captain Beefheart and Ethnic Faces but it’s the one song that always manages to move me regardless of time, place or mood. It’s about a breakup, told from the point of view of the jilted. It starts with Tihista singing: "I just have to know, did you put any thought into this or did you just go?" He’s in denial and can’t fathom what just happened. With each succeeding verse, he goes through stages of regret, desperation, and anger before acceptance. All of this is managed just under about four minutes.

Tihista repeats the opening line as the song closes, as if in a loop. Tellingly, there is no mention of forgiveness in the song: the protagonist doomed to go through everything again, like Sisyphus pushing the burden of his broken heart. Again, this is a mere three-minute plus pop song. But I’ll wager that I’ve cried more times listening to it than anyone else does watching all those Korean telenovelas.

I ask Tihista if he’s going to sing Sucker and he assures me it’s in his set. But I’m worried when Tihista sets up with no one else with him. Almost all his best songs on record are pop symphonies, combining the skill of a miniaturist inscribing Pablo Neruda on a grain of rice and the grand ambition of Phil Spector building brick-by-brick his Wall of Sound. Without his band, I honestly wonder if he can pull it off.

He opens with the title track of his debut. With eyes closed, he launches into the song…

"Don’t breathe a word of this now. I don’t want this getting round…"

I wrote once before that if Liam Gallagher had inherited Lennon’s sneer, Tihista has the working class hero’s coo. Despite being one of my least liked songs from his records, the way he’s singing it now inspires an empathy that I only experience when listening to Morrissey singing Well I Wonder, Dylan circa "Blood on the Tracks" and Rey Valera. It’s a quality rarely captured on record: in fact, even Lennon achieved this consistently only on his home demos, intended only for an audience of two, his wife Yoko and son Sean. But at this moment, Tihista gives a tender and fraught rendition that’s quite brave to open a show with: I’m afraid that after this, he’ll be spent.

My wife grabs my waist. I hold her close. I start to think about how my life would be without her. Where would I go? I’d probably run with the boys again, making unwise and unhealthy decisions that I would regret if only I remembered them. Or maybe I just turn away from it all and live under my bed for the rest of my days. At least there, I wouldn’t have to pretend to be happy. I’d even sell or give away all my CDs and delete every song on my computer. I would have no further use for them.

"The next song’s called "Sucker"," Tihista announces.

As he starts to sing, I hear the sound of a heart breaking.

It’s mine.