London, Alexandra Palace 24 March 2005
Jon Spencer and his Blues Explosion
supported Razorlight at their two sell-out dates at the prestigious
Alexandra Palace, high above London with a capacity of around 8,000
people. Razorlight were originally supposed to play these concerts
in February, supported by Bloc Party. My wife and I picked up tickets
the week before, and a routine check of Mute's website revealed
that Blues Explosion had replaced Bloc Party for the support. 'Result!'
thought I, since until the night of the concert I didn't think I
liked Razorlight.
Typically, London's transport system meant that
we missed the first few songs of the Blues Explosion's slot. The
crowd, somewhat expectedly, didn't really warm to the torrents of
wild noise and extended jams that comprise your average Blues Explosion
set. Strangely, when Razorlight broke down their songs into seemingly
unfocussed and messy squalls of directionless artistry, the same
crowd that greeted the Blues Explosion with such apparent disdain
went wild. Playing to a generally unresponsive crowd in such a big
venue must be a disconcerting and lonely feeling (not to mention
bloody dangerous - the night before some prick cast a shoe at drummer
Russell Simins, which is a pretty stupid thing to do if you're
at the front of a heaving crowd, unless you enjoy having your toes
crushed for the rest of the night). Thankfully, the besuited and
wild Spencer (stage right), the slick-haired aura of calm that is
Judah Bauer and flailing bulk of Simins didn't compromise
at all, ripped through segments of tracks and frantically wrought
barely-formed sounds and noise from their instruments.
Setwise, even as a fan with a reasonable grasp on
their back catalogue, hell I barely recognised any of the songs
they played. In the thirty minutes we were there, I could make out
'Mars, Arizona' ('You won't like this,' intones Spencer at
the start - they didn't), 'Help These Blues' (both from Damage)
with its fiendish 'This is not the devil's music' intro,
a curt snippet of a fuzzed-up 'Bellbottoms' (from Orange)
and a hurried run through the normally mellow 'Magical Colors' (from
ACME). There were some moments of manic genius such as Spencer
howling 'I love you!' over and over while churning feedback
swirled beneath him - ironic, since the crowd clearly didn't love
him. Then there was the noisy, epic conclusion which found
Spencer toying with amps and theremin-style effects while Simins
sweated and hovered low, head down, bashing the hell out of his
poor kit. The pairing of Spencer and Simins is captivating to watch,
which makes the effortless cool of Bauer all the more beguiling.
'So is this Bloc Party?' asked a guy at the bar.
'Nah, these lot are too fucking heavy metal,' came the reply. Heavy
metal? HEAVY METAL?? Fool, these are the bloooze...
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