As befits a legend of the Death rock scene this tribute show 10 years after Rowland S Howard's death is in a venue whose stage is bigger than most of the venues I saw him playing in back in the day and the audience is certainly far larger than any show I saw him play in London, the closest he came to playing anywhere this big was the Shotgun Wedding show at The Venue In New Cross back in 1991.
But the first part of this show takes us back to the first band of his post The Birthday Party career to get recognition These Immortal Souls who I was lucky enough to have been at there first ever show at the Mean Fiddler in Harlesden Back in 1987, now unlike on that hot sweaty night they don't spend the first 10 minutes tuning up and feeding back and making apologies instead Harry Howard welcomes us all to this tribute to his Brother and they kick things off with a magical version of The King Of Kalifornia with J.P.Shilo in the hot seat having to not only play Rowland's guitar parts but singing as well and damn it sounds wonderful full of doomed romanticism and some wonderful keyboards from Genevieve McGuckin.
Harry then took vocal duties on Marry Me (Lie! Lie!) that seemed to fill the vast space they were playing it in almost perfectly as those sinewy guitar lines and the rock-solid drumming from Chris Hughes who was Epic Soundtracks replacement drove it along brilliantly no shambling that's for sure.
Then Edwina Preston from The Moll Flanders band came on to sing Black Milk and her powerful presence and deep voice worked well against the splintering guitars. That led into the instrumental Insomnicide that had some great dark plangent tones form both Harry Howard on bass and J.P. Shilo.
Harry then introduced Hyper Space and in the grand tradition of the sorts of bands Rowland was in that was the wrong song as J.P. Shilo had to sing The Story Goes in his nice deep tones before we could go all out on Hyper Space with Harry making sure we all felt nicely out there even if this is a no smoking venue that didn't have dealers in the toilets like in the old days or in the case of the Buffalo Bill show at the Sir George Robey dealers coming round every few minutes.
The These Immortal Souls set then ended with a great piano heavy version of Crowned that J. P. Shilo's vocals worked perfectly for.
Then they changed the band around with Conrad Standish taking over on Bass and Mick Harvey on Guitar and Genevieve still on keyboards while Chris Hughes stayed on drums for the Shotgun Wedding part of proceedings that was played far more like they did at The Venue in New Cross rather than the show they did at The Underworld in Camden that Rowland could barely stand up for.
Lydia Lunch told us how Rowland was one of her favorite guitarists to work with over the years and that Endless Fall was one of the best songs she did with Rowland it was brilliantly dark and twisted and it was great to hear Lydia singing on a large stage. She then sang Still Burning with Harry Howard that was almost as intense as when she sang it with Rowland back in the day it was a real highlight of the show.
Then on came Bobby Gillespie to take Rowland's place on Some Velvet Morning with Lydia mocking him for being best known for singing the song with Kate Moss and you only need to look at the video on youtube to understand why. Thankfully this version was far closer to Lydia and Rowland's version but Bobby's vocals didn't really match up to Lydia's that well and it might have sounded better sung by Nick Cave, still great to hear Lydia singing it again and it was good way to close the first half of the show.
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The second half of the show opened with Nick Cave coming on and paying tribute to his old friend and telling us how amazing it was that Rowland wrote Shivers when he was just 16 years old before he played a wonderfully haunting version on an upright piano solo a fitting tribute.
Then as soon as the Piano was pushed to the side of the stage and the Pop Crimes band came on with Mick Harvey on drums, Conrad Standish on Bass and Genevieve McGuckin on Keyboards and J.P. Shilo on Guitar with late replacement Alice Zawadzki on violin there set opened with Harry Howard singing a nicely doomed version of Pop Crimes.
Then Jonnine Standish slinked onstage for a nicely downbeat take on Dead Radio, she then handed over the vocal duties to her husband Conrad who sang Shut Me Down that was full of dark romanticism and wonderfully lyrical guitar lines interwoven with Alice's violin playing.
Undone was sung by J.P. Shilo as if he meant each and every word as the music seemed to fill every inch of the festival hall with its dark majesty. Jonnine came back on to sing Silver Chain that kept things nicely doomed sounding musically and wonderfully romantically hopeless.
Next up was Rowlands take on Ave Maria that endlessly re-worked theme that was made deeply gothic with the rumble and deep dark vocals of J.P. Shilo and the near classical violin parts from Alice. Harry Howard came back on for a great version of Exit Everything that was one of the highlights of the second half for me.
Then Edwina Preston re-emerged to really put her all into Wayward Man her vocals were full of passion and pain that worked brilliantly with the darkly expansive music. Then Jonnine Standish came back out to tell us she knew that Rowland had a thing for her when she heard (I Know) A Girl Called Jonny that she sang as a duet kind of with her husband Conrad that added another level or two of meaning to the song.
Bobby Gillespie came back on and after telling us all it was time to stand up and dance sang a wonderful version of Autoluminescent that has been one of my favorite Rowland songs for years great to hear it live again. However, on Sleep Alone Bobby sounded a bit out of his depth almost as if he was volunteering to be crucified for his sins.
Harry Howard then thanked everyone for coming to pay tribute to his brother before they closed with a magisterial take on Golden Age Of Bloodshed that seemed to contain all the best things about a Rowland S Howard song.
Of course they got an encore and rather than get everyone on for the grand finale instead Conrad Standish sang a nicely downbeat take on Breakdown (And Then) that really seemed to be a fitting way to close a quite moving and emotional nights music that brought back loads of memories of all the times I saw Rowland S Howard performing that was also a great way to promote the re-issues of Pop Crimes and Teenage Snuff Film that are out now on Mute.
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