The solo career of former Strangler HUGH CORNWELL has been a darkly compelling one to watch, as he has openly struggled to balance his recent melodic singer-songwriter tendencies against the inescapable gravitational pull of the songs of his former band, around which he orbits like a small spaceship around a particularly dense black hole. Previous gigs I’ve attended have seen the frontman chafe irritably against Stranglers nostalgia, or at others give in and split the set 50-50 between old and new work. Tonight it seems as though he’s hit a successful marriage of the two.
The crowd (although a fraction the size of that attending The Stranglers’ last shows a few months back) is healthy enough. Predictably, poignantly, middle aged men in black predominate. Hairlines are losing their own gravitational battles against Time. Waistlines are roughly double the size since the bass-line to Peaches was first heard. We’re all growing older. Tonight, we are visibly growing older together. In footballing terms, Cornwell’s audience is an aging squad, with little in the way of youth breaking through the ranks. Still, an audience is beyond the control of any artist, so don’t take the observation as a criticism.
The band take the stage. Cornwell, although his hair remains suspiciously dark, remains the lean, gaunt figure of old. Flanked by striking Amazonian bassist Caz Campbell and backed by rock-solid drummer Chris Bell, they jump straight into Going to the City, a punchy, mean little track that recaptures some of the vim and vigour which has been missing in many of his recent albums. “We’re going to play all of the new album,” he announces at the song’s conclusion. A scattering of brave cheers greet this news, and you don’t have to be too cynical to observe a slight flattening of the atmosphere at this point. Here is the conundrum of the ongoing musician with an illustrious past. The new album Hoover Dam is, I would argue, Cornwell’s best to date, recapturing some of the darkness and gristle of his best work. While you suspect he’d rather be composing gentler slices of melodic whimsy, his voice and playing suit a leaner musical vision, borne out by the effectiveness of Hoover Dam’s performance tonight. Cornwell’s guitar cuts through like cheese wire on the spritely venom of Within You or Without You, while the disjointed Beefheartian rhythms of Philip K Ridiculous recall Cornwell’s solo debut Nosferatu. Elsewhere there’s plenty of less memorable medium-paced fare, but for a sixty year-old performer it’s nevertheless a modest marvel.
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And yet there’s that inescapable gravitational pull again…as the dying notes of album closer Banging On At The Same Old Beat fade, they bleed into the opening siren chords of Stranglers classic Tank and the front erupts into a hefty middle-aged mosh-pit. Granted it’s a goose-bump raising performance, but as the set settles into the now familiar alternate Stranglers / solo pattern the equally familiar audience response follows – respectful, quietly pleased attention for Black Hair Black Eyes Black Suit, then delirious cheers, singalongs and pogoing when he resurrects 1977’s Dead Ringer. Still, if Cornwell notices or cares greatly about this he at least doesn’t say. An odd, but oddly effective version of Golden Brown succeeds despite the stylistic wrench of the absent harpsichord, and just to cap a triumphant evening, they close with an epic double whammy encore of Walk On By and Down in the Sewer, each song stretched out with near-psychedelic middle sections. The past cannot be escaped, and nor arguably should it be, but on tonight’s evidence this is surely a good thing.
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