(Friday 02 February 2007)
MALCOLM BURNS checks out Damon Albarn's new supergroup.
It may seem odd that Damon Albarn's latest project, The Good, The Bad and The Queen, with its narrative identity centred so strongly on London, would be given its only Scottish outing of this short tour in Motherwell, a run-down former steel town which is culturally very far from the metropolis.
However, the Concert Hall makes a more than half-decent rock venue. And Albarn puts on more than a half-decent, if artfully downbeat, rock show.
On a stage incongruously laced with bunting in front of an atmospheric image of a Victorian London skyline, a good old days-style music hall master of ceremonies introduces some jugglers.
Then the support act, three members of south London Appalachian band Indigo Moss, run through a handful of stylised bluegrass songs about love and death.
Singer Trevor Moss has a haunting high-pitched wail which stays with you long after he's gone.
When Albarn finally arrives onstage, he looks like a cheery Artful Dodger, wearing a short top hat.
His supergroup in tow features former Clash icon Paul Simonon, star Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen (pictured right) and ex-Verve guitarist Simon Tong, as well as a four-piece string section.
First up is History Song, with its spare lyrics and slightly threatening refrain. It's low key, but then we get a taste of heavy bass from Simonon. Albarn sits at the piano to insert some jangling discords.
Doo-wop pastiche '80s Life brings out more melodramatic bass which matches the lyrics. "I don't want to live a war/That's got no end in our time."
The Kingdom of Doom sounds not unlike the Clash doing London Calling. Albarn and Simonon alternate on vocals, as the lights pick out the red flags in the bunting around them.
The rumbling bass grinds your blood and bones as Simonon struts the stage, pulling contortions like an elongated Norman Wisdom, before shouldering his bass in rocket launcher position.
Song by song, the mood moves from energetic to elegaic.
On reaching The Good, The Bad and The Queen, the final track of the album of the band of the same odd name, Albarn takes the music uptown again, reaching a barrelhouse pitch on piano.
Simonon sings of how the world has been seeming to end with a downbeat apocalyptic whimper.
At the end, this southern expeditionary force seems to have conquered the Caledonian horde.
They return for encores - Albarn plays melodica on a dubwise B-side called Back in the Day, then hands mic duties over to Syrian guest rapper Eslam Jaweed, who is wearing a black keffiyeh to perform in Arabic on another B-side track, Mr Whippy.
Visibly cheered by the enthusiastic applause, Albarn touches his heart like a footballer who's scored and promises: "We'll be coming back to Scotland for sure." Perhaps he didn't expect such a warm response for his downbeat metropolitan elegies.
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