Venue:
The Waterfront, Norwich.
Date: 20/10/2017
It’s difficult to think of another singer whose voice has neither matured or declined with age, but has remained exactly the same for the last thirty years or so, but if you were to pursue such an arcane pursuit ( this is TheAfterword, after all) Justin Currie would undoubtedly come top of the list. His delivery remains an earthy, soulful croon, able to swoop into a falsetto as the occasion demands before landing back on earth and dragging you with it.
His songwriting scope is not inexhaustible – essentially, boy meets girl, boy is unable to avoid fucking things up, boy reflects that he’s fucked things up again – but Currie’s skill in putting together these saloon bar-opera vignettes (this is, after all, the man who reduced master lyricists Chris Difford to tears during a BBC Songwriter’s Circle) is such that he can get a room full of people singing lustily along to an unashamed tale of misanthropy without any cajoling on his part at all. “Don’t be bullied into changing your behaviour by the performer” he instructs us (paradoxically) at one point. “If I ask if you’re having a good time, I want to hear silence”. When his three piece band leaves the stage to him so he can perform a couple of solo numbers he seems cheered. “On my own, just the way I like it” he quips. An audience member responds with a quip. “If you could all just fuck off too, that’d be great. I’ve got your money” Justin replies. It’s not even close to being a joke.
The band itself are a sturdy supporting cast – none too showy, but on the del Amitri reimaginings the guitar player throws in some aposite jazzy licks, and references the original power chords and riffs just enough to keep the original feel intact. He is, we decide, in his day job, a guitar tutor. The bass player, by using the same application of logic and deduction, would appear have been offered the job as he was the last man standing after a particularly brutal Glasgow bar fight. Rising tears – and they were frequent – at the delivery of another Currietal tale of tragedy and betrayal could generally be swiftly quelled by a glance to stage left and imaging being asked just what you were looking at, laddie? Not always though. Reader, I wept.
Emphatically not a laurel-resting exercise, although you’d forgive the inclusion of Always the Last to Know, Be My Downfall, Driving With the Brakes On and Move Away, Jimmy Blue in anyone’s Greatest Hits set, Currie concludes the set before the early, Hepworthian, curfew of ten o’clock – “There’s a disco later. It’s not a club, you don’t have to be a member, it’s a fucking disco” – with No, Surrender – possibly the most Nihilist lyric ever committed to hard drive. He pulls off the almost impossible trick of giving you hope for the future while comitantly denying that there actually is any.
I’ve loved Justin Currie’s songwriting and performance for years now, he’s soundtracked too many events in my life for me to pull out of the cupboard of my soul all at once and maintain my English stiff upper lip. I try and stay above it, but he is my downfall once again tonight.
The audience:
Devoted.
It made me think..
I can only imaginge the opprobrium if I called him the best songwriter treading the boards in Britain right now to his face.
You might get opprobrium, but you’d be right all the same.
This years This is My Kingdom is little short of terrific, deffo a contender for my top 10 of the year.
I’d buy it if the website behaved itself properly. My browser security is deeply unhappy accessing the Spanish based server that hosts his online sales. Shame, because I want the artefact, not just bits and pieces of a digital download, but I’ll do without if it’s that much of a pain.
I bought it today. You”re right, the website was a pain in the bum to buy from – took my money no problem then took me about an hour of repeated attempts to log in and download before I actually got the files.
Got mine on e-music, if that helps…., which it don’t, as it gives me merely a good quality stream to rip to disc, less what you want.
I weakened, and tried again. Maybe Archie had hacked the Spanish server or something, but for whatever reason, I got through to PayPal this time, and Roberto es tu tío! the disc is ordered.
Terrific review and I agree with every word. I sometimes worry I’ve turned people off JC by overkill, hopefully this review will encourage a few more Afterworders to have a listen. @skirky the review is up on the Del Amitri Facebook page and is being very well recieved
One tries. 🙂
I still treasure my Waking Hours lp signed “Anything for a freebie” after they dropped into Andy’s Records after a gig at the Adelphi in *mumbles something about the eighties* and I said I’d give them an album each out of the racks if they autographed some sleeves. I think he took Zuma.
Brilliant review – captures JC’s character perfectly.
Thank you, that’s very kind.