It's been a long while since Juliette and The Licks last toured and played London. I assumed Ms Lewis took a sabbatical realizing that her band had become tired and certainly the last show I saw her play at Indigo was by far the worst I'd seen by some distance, not helped by her performing barefoot on a stage that had broken glass on it. It was a memorable night for the wrong reasons, you might say.
So I was hoping she was back to her best and that my first visit to Heaven under the Arches (or just plain Heaven if you prefer) for 20 plus years wasn't going to be a disappointment. Well on getting to the bar just before the main support act Waco came on they had already run out of all draft beer and only had tins so I opted for white wine and yes by the time I went to order a second glass they'd run out of that too!!
Still, the venue space is really great, situated as it is in a large railway arch beneath Charing Cross Station. It has amazingly good sound that even made slightly lumpen support act Waco sound decent. They opened with a song about New Year's Eve that sounded OK and had a good chugging riff to it with some very south coast-sounding vocals that reminded me of long forgotten indie reggae band Zegema Beach.
The next song was based around the singer going "Oh Oh!" a lot over some perfunctory indie rock that was (it has to be said) very well played but lacked any real spark. Wrangler was okay but by now I was starting to think that Waco are just one catchy song away from being the next Toploader. No, really.
Jezebels was about the best song they had about going out with the wrong woman and the almost bouncy chugging indie got some of the younger fans interested a little bit. Rotten Tooth at least sounded better than its intro led me to believe and might just be good enough to get a spin on the Evening Session with Steve Lamacq.
The idea of Doing your best in Dungeness was interesting as how can you do your best in such a depressing middle of nowhere hole as that? Still it was a paean of sorts to the bands hometown roots. By the time they finished with Agitation I was certain they had played about 3 songs too many as they just didn't have enough good material, or certainly anything that I'll remember less than a week later.
So having failed to get the drink I wanted it was time for Juliette and The Licks. They came out and launched into Smash And Grab as if their lives depended on it with Juliette in a one piece white trouser suit with stars and stripes running vertically up. The outfit I'm sure is taken from a film even If I can't remember which one.
Still Juliette starting shaking like an old school preacher as she howled that her Mojo was Rising on Mind Full Of Daggers it was electric and kinetic and she appeared to have got all her energy back during her time away from touring.
Then, seemingly appropriately during Sticky Honey, about half a dozen late arrivals decided to push through the sold out crowd passed where I was standing and managed to spill some of their drinks on almost everyone they passed without bothering to say sorry so that I was well prepared to push them as if they were already in the mosh pit and ended up soaked in whatever drinks were spilled. Yes I was sticky and fuming a bit as several other wet people gave me thumbs up for pushing back, damn I felt like a grumpy old man.
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Any Way You Want had plenty of sass to it as I tried to wring out my t-shirt and get it a bit drier so I could concentrate on enjoying the music. Ah the Purgatory Blues of realizing I had a wet patch on my jeans that looked like I'd wet myself. Not cool, but the song and performance certainly were as Juliette shook and shimmied across the stage like Suzi Quatro's slightly demented daughter.
Killer was driven and almost had a flashback feel to Natural Born Killers but with more guitar and less blood and guts. Hard Lovin' Woman sounded like an old Blues shout amped up through Led Zep's back line. It was a good Hoary 70's boogie rock song full of testifying which broke down at the end after the first false ending into Whole Lotta Love for about 6 bars as it bludgeoned itself to a colossal ending.
Hello Hero was about as trite as the lyrics got all night and for me didn't work nearly as well as most of the set. A bit of a low point. Still Got Love To Kill soon blew that away with its lascivious howls and Juliette preening all over the place, so it was a real hot mess of a song.
We then got a full throttle cover of Proud Mary wherein Juliette did her best to sound like Janis Joplin. She did her best preacher woman blues shouter routine and brought Waco back on stage as her backing singers which worked really well. Hot Kiss kept things Hawt and the band flew through it as if their lives depended on it.
They finished the set with Get Up and had we been sitting down. I'm sure we would all have got up all right. Damn it had plenty of energy and they left the stage to the sort of applause you'd expect them too after a hot set like this.
The encore opened with one of the new songs, This I Know. t was Ok but seemed to lack momentum a little bit until they launched into a great cover of The Kinks' You Really Got Me complete with a sly nod to the Ray Davies ex-wife Chrissie Hynde. Damn they nailed the feral energy needed to get the song to really work and it was very cool.
They then closed with You're Speaking My Language, the only song of the night to spark anything like a mass sing along and right to the end Juliette gave it everything to show she is really back and is currently well worth seeing live. By this point I was also happy to be able to go home and change out of my still horribly damp T-shirt.
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