“Deer Tick’s the name. Strep throat is the game.”

Those were the words with which Deer Tick, a.k.a. Rhode Island alt-country singer/songwriter John McCauley, greeted the crowd at Mercury Lounge Sunday night.
I suppose when you go by the name Deer Tick, you ought to be thankful it’s not Lyme Disease that has stricken you. But no, apparently in McCauley’s case it was a mystery infection that turned into strep, and which, he promised, could make for a difficult set. “So we’re gonna take it down a step tonight. We’ll just have to see how it goes.”

It went, in a word, well. So much so that you would have thought we were being hustled. As McCauley launched into songs from last fall’s War Elephant, he may have been in pain, but we weren’t feeling it. He sounded fine — “fine” being a relative term when the voice is one as distinctively pinched and nasal as John’s. But on tunes like the bright “Spend the Night,” the not-so-bright “Art Isn’t Real” and the rocking “Standing at the Threshold,” you would never have known he wasn’t in top form.

But the throat ailment became a running theme throughout, as McCauley’s between-song banter proved as entertaining as the music. He offered that the reason his throat was feeling better might have been that on this night he was coating it, not with some soothing balm, but with beer. “Ahh,” he said after a long sip. “A more potent elixir, and it tastes better too.” John also offered that he might need to consult the investigatory powers of a certain TV medical professional. “I think I need to see Dr. House. No, really, I think it’s one of those mystery illnesses. I’m not contagious, though.”
He also cracked wise when introducing his new bassist, “Sandyman,” who replaced the old one, Chris (“We love Chris but it was just getting — weird”), when riffing on the uvula (“It’s the girlie part of the body”) and telling the crowd that sometimes “I just like to pretend I’m in Limp Bizkit” (“That one was from our new album, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water”).

Jokes aside, Deer Tick sounded especially good on “Let Me Be Lonely Tonight,” on a cover of John Prine’s “Mexican Home” and on a new song called (I think) “You Don’t Know How Easy It Is.” Word is that they’ll soon be working on a new album, and if that song is any indication, we should be in for a treat. A couple more songs, finishing with a rousing version of “La Bamba,” and John McCauley and his aqua-colored guitar were off into the night, perhaps in search of a diagnosis from Dr. House.

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