New York’s WHITE LIGHT MOTORCADE provide the support tonight for what is Jesse Malin’s first Brighton escapade. An emotive rock four piece with a penchant for British music, the band draw influence from the likes of early 90s indie-rockers Ride and the Stone Roses. With lead guitarist Mark Lewis, looking very dandified in a red, white and blue pin-stripe, harmonising with the excellently-named Harley Dinardo, and a drummer with a flair for playing his kit with a pair of maracas, the Motorcade perform a tight and illustrious set. Singles ‘My Way’ and ‘Open Your Eyes’, reveal the band’s glam-rock pretentions and highlight Dinardo’s Billy Corgan-like whine, whilst set-closer ‘On Top’ gives more than a nod to the likes of the MC5 and Stooges.
The Concorde appears a little thin on the ground tonight, as JESSE MALIN takes to the stage, dressed in a tight black leather jacket like Travolta or the Fonz. Telling the crowd of his desire to check Brighton out after seeing it ‘on the back of a Jam CD’, he likens it to ‘Coney Island on acid’ before he and his four-piece band break into material from his acclaimed debut, ‘The Fine Art Of Self-Destruction’ including the Springsteen-esque ‘Wendy’ and ‘Downliner’ and the sublime ‘Cigarettes and Violets’.
Malin interspersed these established numbers with songs from his new album ‘The Heat’ including 'Hotel Columbia', which he described as “Spinal Tap meets The Shining” and ‘Silver Manhattan’, a new drum-led ballad that musically could be Feeder but for the edge that the singer gives it with his brittle vocals. "Brooklyn" receives possibly the longest introduction ever as Malin turns into club compere, recalling his times as a removal man in New Yawk, shifting Barbara Steisand’s bed across Manhattan and getting wasted in the process. A friend tells me that this is not the first time he has heard this story, but it’s entertaining all the same, and Malin has the audience under his spell.
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The Big Apple trend is continued with the punkish ‘Riding on the Subway’ and ‘Queen of the Underworld’, before Malin launches into perhaps the highlight of the evening, a heart-achingly poignant rendition of Neil Young’s ‘Helpless’. The similarities with Young are quite apparent: brutally-honest lyrics, a distinctive vocal, and simple, yet infectious melody. The band break tradition and do an encore of four songs, one new (‘Basement home’), one old (‘Solitaire’) and then treats the crowd to two covers, Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Hungry Heart’ and rousing anti-war, anti-Bush inspired version of Elvis Costello’s ‘Oliver’s Army’ to end the night. Fantastic.
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