Live Review: John Grant at Town Hall, Leeds


John Grant

Ari Magg




John Grant’s three solo albums so far have in a peculiar way showcased his past, present and future.

His début ‘Queen Of Denmark‘ was full of the regret and sardonic bitterness wreaked by an adolescent hell, its follow up ‘Pale Green Ghosts‘ a darkly frank place holder on a life changed by a positive HIV diagnosis, whilst last year’s ‘Grey Tickles, Black Pressure‘ formed a love/hate letter to the creeping slights and petty inadequacies of reaching middle age.

It seems then that the more we know, the less we understand: John Grant is as complex as he can appear disarming, an artist who bears the utterly unique travails of being adored precisely for who we think he is. Leeds’ nineteenth century Town Hall is at least an edifice worthy of his idiosyncrasies; its majestic looking pipe organ only partially obscured by the minimalist back drop to tonight’s performance. Grant himself appears in near darkness, his band – other than the gloriously theatrical former Siouxsie and The Banshees drummer Budgie – as unassuming as the sombre, crepuscualr lighting.

If the void causes the occasional half tumble amongst the seated, pin-drop quiet audience, it’s nothingness is of course a prop in itself. The singer opens with ‘Geraldine‘, an example of how comparisons drawn between real life experience and those of people elevated to the status of vaguely mythical (a club of his subjects already housing odes to Sigourney Weaver and Ernest Borgnine) are often frustrating and inconclusive. The song bears all the hallmarks that make him so important; freedom to scale for that luxuriously gilded voice, the lightness of its opening phrases, a chorus laden with exhortation and hope.

It heralds a set long on ‘Grey Tickles…’ material, a work which at the time of release sounded like a series of good ideas searching for the right tunes to take them somewhere. Gradually however, we begin to see the point. Etched into the dirty funk of ‘Snug Slacks, Voodoo Doll‘s schizophrenic European grain versus its skatting grind, or via the silhouetted pop of ‘Disappointing‘, it’s revealed that the messages are still the same, but the host has adapted yet another veil through which to deliver them. Rather than running to us, he continues to head the other way.

The simpler view might be that at his best, over analysing Grant’s craft is a waste of time. Songs after all like ‘Marz‘ are so sonically gorgeous and perfectly evocative it’s impossible not to live in them for more than a little, whilst the life-coach eviscerating ‘GMF‘ is the most fun you can have swearing your way through a Tourette’s inspired refrain in middle class company. It arrives at the point the previously bystanderish crowd finally give themselves up to the spectacle. As the pomp rock of ‘Queen Of Denmark‘ delivers blow after blow of calculatedly bombastic overload, they rise to their feet as if pulled up by magnets, a trick of mass manipulation which the singer’s pacing and charisma makes seem easy.

There can’t have been many other concerts at which the encore feels so intrinsically linked to the main body of the show. Grant’s objective from playing more material appears not to be in rousing people or applying the euphoric jolt of familiarity to them after all, as such is the heavily biographical narrative of much of his work escapism is the last place its gallery can seek refuge.

The songs which are after when the band goes off and comes back on again have their apex in ‘Drug‘, a remnant from a past with The Czars on which he cautions the subject, “I will miss you when you’re gone, but I’m not equipped to be your mom”. The sentiment is one he has occasionally dealt with – looking after yourself first, then other people.

Maybe this solipsism is what the John Grant we feel we know and we know we love is all about after all, beneath the swirl of over simplification. Tonight he does both, an enigma wrapped up in music as beautiful as it’s tantalisingly deep, leaving us knowing as much or as little about him as we did ninety superb minutes before.



(Andy Peterson)


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