TOMMY STINSON looks like a Kia-ora crow. Spiky hair in clumps and a face that breaks into sharp angles as he sings. Accompanied only by guitarist and foil Joe Reineke of the Alien Crime Syndicate (the band, not the interstellar organisation) he doles out pretty songs acoustically, whilst Joe embroiders them with electric fuzz, hum and swooning ebow counter-pointing. It’s an effective and measured mix in a format that can otherwise tire easily.
Next up is JESSE MALIN himself, boxer’s nose, dimples and puffy epicanthic bright black eyes; counter-culture’s most celebrated raconteur.
Aided and abetted by Christine Smith, consummate piano player, keyboardist, backing vocalist and sometime silent straight woman to Malin’s alt-Ustinov turns, Malin launches into a set laden with material from his latest album "The Heat." The songs thrive on the stripped down delivery, and Malin’s tall tales from Manhatten and Queens, covering everything from pre-teen escapades to a folk history of NY hardcore bands DGeneration and Heart Attack, only heighten the intimacy of songs which already breath close on your neck.
Choice B-side ‘Cigarettes and Violets’ is all discordant chiming piano, skyscrapers and submarines in its heights and depth. ‘Arrested’ (subject to a lengthy and comic introduction with demands it’s own place on the set list) rolls out raw, with ‘Brooklyn’ delivering more sharp lyrical turns and vocal contortion tricks. Hard headed and warm hearted, the songs rack-up with Malin’s voice broaching Neil Young’s grizzled tones or the cooing territory of a red blooded Billy Corgan.
The song-writing heritage of Talking Heads, ‘you can take the man out of the city but you can’t take the city out of the man’ poet of New York Lou Reed and others is implicit in Malin’s writing tonight, as is a rich vein of association with New Jersey legend Bruce Springsteen. But despite the realist grit, often concerned with the seedier side of Big Apple life, Malin’s attentions to the world outside his cities limits are soon evidenced. In a tribute to the victims of the September 11th attack and the current war in Iraq, Smith and Malin begin Neil Young classic ‘Helpless’: the Noo-Yawk schmuck preamble is dropped as Malin steps into the crowd and sits down asking all to join him.
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Glass crunches as the Rescue Rooms reclines. Malin is practically in my lap. If I had stretched out my arms we might have made a pieta of sorts. The kid next to me shakes his camera urgently till the flash light blinks. And we all sing. It’s deeply touching. A glimpse at Malin’s website will tell anyone that this isn’t the first time he’s pulled this off, but even with the benefit of 20x20 hindsight it’s hard to begrudge the man this gesture. Malin’s sincerity and self exposure is punk orthodoxy in its truest form; That previous and subsequent numbers ('Going Out West' and ‘Riding on the Subway’ respectively) fail to be dwarfed by Young’s material further illustrates the fact that Malin is a man approaching his zenith.
Pushing the curfew, Smith and Malin retake the stage to cover Elvis Costello’s anti-militaristic ‘Oliver’s Army’ with lyrics steeped deep in British footnoting, but summing up the evening in two fell lyrics; ‘I could talk all night … setting the world to rights’. Malin has found himself resolute, this is New York urban rock post 9/11, clear eyed but profoundly hopeful.
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