Live Review: Happy Mondays, London Brixton Academy


 

Happy Mondays at London Brixton Academy (Photo: Alberto Pezzali for Live4ever Media)

Happy Mondays at London Brixton Academy (Photo: Alberto Pezzali for Live4ever Media)




Stints on reality TV shows and pearly false teeth might have mitigated the uncouth image of the early days, but it didn’t stop a Happy Mondays reunion happening back in 2012, and now Madchester’s most hedonistic outburst is celebrating twenty five years since the release of their ‘Pills ‘n’ Thrill and Bellyaches‘ album by touring it in its entirety.

When Pete MacLeod, the band’s support act, appears the Brixton Academy isn’t exactly brimming with life. To his credit though, the Glaswegian indie singer/songwriter is unfazed, strumming through a couple of songs on his acoustic guitar with some brio, including the wistful ‘I Went Swimming Today‘…then out comes a man who proceeds to hunch over a laptop and pull electronic strings for the remainder of the set.

Anyone who’s heard MacLeod’s acoustic-led debut album is in for a jolt as it’s suddenly all about dominating dance beats – redoubled by the echoes of a slowly filling up venue – and flashing, fulgent lights. His vocals manage to hold up well enough throughout before the two men leave a largely unresponsive crowd to the lingering sound of a de rigueur drum and bass sample in his closing number.

A quarter of a century has been long enough for Shaun Ryder to mull over the Happy Mondays’ most ergonomically live configuration; Ryder stays still at the back clad in leather and shades while Bez, the group’s habitual totem dressed in shorts, t-shirt and hat (after all, it is a mild December), is let loose with his idiosyncratic jounces next to a colourfully garbed Rowetta who proprietarily struts across the stage.

Happy Mondays at London Brixton Academy (Photo: Alberto Pezzali for Live4ever Media)

Happy Mondays at London Brixton Academy (Photo: Alberto Pezzali for Live4ever Media)

“Is it time to flip the record?”, queries an amnesic Ryder after ‘Grandbag’s Funeral‘. “One more song first,” responds Rowetta, whose voice is yet to lose an ounce of strength from the time she first joined the band in 1990. Hers and Ryder’s duet on ‘Dennis and Lois‘ impressively gels, Ryder’s reluctance to come forward doing him a slight disservice as his singing, though never great then or now, has aged more convincingly than contemporaries such as Ian Brown.

Having original guitarist Mark Day back in the line-up is a boon. His incessant work alongside drummer Gaz Whelan and bassist Paul Ryder (“our kid”, brother Shaun introduces him as) glues together the grooves that a large portion of an older-looking audience jig along to ‘Bez-style’ as much as they probably did first time around.

Less is more, or maybe his stamina isn’t quite what it was, but Bez disappears early on only to leap back out on for an energetic rendition of ‘Step On‘. Yet however good ‘Pills ‘n’ Thrill and Bellyaches’ is, the problem with performing one album in full, something of a norm for still functioning, inveterate bands, is that the set feels incomplete. Even with a short encore consisting of ‘Hallelujah‘ and ‘Wrote For Luck‘, one that extends the show to just shy of one hour, a Happy Mondays performance without ‘24 Hour Party People‘ and ‘Mad Cyril‘ is like a Best Of Manchester CD without the Happy Mondays.

There has been talk of a new album ever since their reform, but with a coherent sounding Ryder & co on form tonight reliving past romps for the time being, there is more than enough melon left to twist on until then.



Visit Live4ever’s photo gallery from the London gig in full right here

(Steven White)


Learn More