Live Review: Benjamin Booker @ Manchester Gorilla


Benjamin Booker




Some venues suit some acts, and tonight is like some kind of power couple.

Benjamin Booker launches, well saunters, on to the stage, but from there it’s explosive save for the slightly slow fuse of opener Slow Drag Under. Booker’s tempered opening shot oozes savvy blues nods and just feels right. It’s lived in, gritty and authentic and a great calling card for the rest of the show.

In fact, it almost sums up the entire show; later there may be energy and fireworks, emotion and soul, and all are brilliant snapshots of Booker’s talents, but they never stray past a core set of values. Values that are on display time and time again throughout the show.

In posh speak, he is almost the definition of poise and élan. In simpler termsm he’s as cool as a very cool lick-able thing on a stick.

The performance is relaxed, controlled, but still built around an intense power. Moments like Wicked Waters just burst into life while Booker and his band never look in danger of breaking a sweat.

Though anyone can be cool (maybe not anyone), but without the music to back it up what does it mean? Booker has the music, that’s almost a given, but he has even more. The songs are often merely window dressing for his passion and belief.

Recent single Believe felt haunted by the ghost of Sam Cooke’s A Change is Gonna Come, however, live it’s much more intense and emotionally raw. Similar to Cooke’s own not-so-smooth, and much more intense and rougher live vocals on the Live At The Harlem Square Club album. Another performance that just drips with passion, insanity and intensity.

This is why the stand out moments really hit home. Violent Shiver is just aargh! kind of good. Something about it makes your stomach churn, standing still is never an option. Live it feels more rounded, more earthy, more dirty, but most importantly it’s more fun.

Which is almost the antithesis of the other stand out moment, Slow Coming. It’s captivating from start to finish. Unlike Violent Shiver’s claustrophobia, this takes huge deep breaths. It comes to life in the spaces and is beautiful for it.



This ability to transition, almost at will, from light to dark, from in to out and beyond is really what makes this evening’s performance. Booker’s vocals wrench and claw, they feel lived in, in fact, more than that, they’re soaked in.

These wonderful vocals are hammered home time and again by a brilliant, exciting and genuine performance. Whether it’s powerful blows or long, emotive licks, Booker and band are always on point.

Put all this in a compact, sweaty, wonderfully acoustic box, and you get one hell of a show. Booker fills every corner of the room, making it feel even smaller, even more remarkably close.

It’s this feeling that remains. A feeling that only a band at the height of their powers can deliver. It’s a feeling that be-stills and quickens all at once. This is a performance that is intuitive and honest, natural and alive with possibility.

But more than anything it’s just such goddamn fun.

(Dylan Llewellyn-Nunes)


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