After the euphoria of last weeks show, this weeks Live From Abbey Road was never going to live up to high expectations. The line-up this week did not help: The Subways, Gnarls Barkley and Herbie (yes him again!) Hancock.The set:
The Subways
- Oh Yeah
- Strawberry Blonde
- I Won't Let You Down
- Whatever
- Who's Gonna Save My Soul?
- Surprise
- All I Want (with Sonya Kitchell)
- Court And Spark (with Sonya Kitchell)
As it turned out The Subways are the best thing about this weeks show. Their young vibrant attitude to music made up for a slightly lacklustre set. Their view is it doesn't matter where they are, they perform with the same ferocity and energy. New album All Or Nothing (of which was said 'the most exciting thing about the album is the cover') has not been greatly received and from the two songs 'Strawberry Blonde' and 'I Won't Let You Down', I can see why. Opener 'Oh Yeah' from their debut, however, is an excellent song, full of energy and fervour. The dual vocals are great. Bassist and co-singer Charlotte Cooper talks about her life in a three piece which adds an interesting perspective and lead singer/guitarist Lunn tells us that it needs to be powerful and colourful and often weird. What emerges is very straightforward. The personal relationship between Lunn and Cooper ended recently but their musical partnership strives on. Lunn tells us that the music is more important and it happened when their new album was about to be released. This 'strain' is echoed in the music. Drummer Morgan is just going with the flow, described as a 'ball of energy'. The cohesion in the band is clearly strong. For how long I don't know.
Gnarls Barkley (aka producer Danger Mouse and vocalist Cee-Lo Green) are a strange pair. They perform three songs from their latest album The Odd Couple (apt name) with mixed results. Opener 'Whatever' is excruciatingly bad. After sound checking and drinking beer, they go straight into the song. Green's vocals are horrible and descend into a wordless drone. The music is flat and uninspired. 'Who's Gonna Save My Soul?' is much betterl, a delicate guitar and simple keyboard arrangement coupled with a drum loop. Green's vocals are great. DM tells us that every upbeat song has some sadness. They try to explain 'Surprise' as uniqueness being loneliness. The song is not great but short. I expected a version of their big hit 'Crazy' rather than just trying to plug new stuff but it's also commendable that they were not that predictable. I guess you can't have it both ways.
A second stint from Herbie Hancock who I still do not get. This time he is joined by singer Sonya Kitchell for two more Joni Mitchell songs from Hancock's tribute album. 'All I Want' is interrupted by a voice over explaining the nature of the album, focusing on lyrics instead of just music etc. This is a good thing as every song sounds exactly the same - random jazz piano, blasts of clarinet and soft annoying drums. 'Court And Spark' seems to go on forever and has no discernible structure or direction. So more of the same then. Kitchell is really good but the constantly shifting nature of the music is a frustrating distraction.As expected, not a great show. Next week is a great line-up including Elbow so a good show in prospect.
No comments:
Post a Comment