Leaf, Liverpool, 11 June 2013
We’re in the fast lane all the way, a dashing sculptor at the wheel with his Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned and hair swept back by the summer breeze. ‘Two Tribes’ blazes from the car stereo: mandatory listening for the journey along the M62 from Manchester to Liverpool. I sit in the back seat with a teenage prodigy drinking cold cans of Polish lager. We shout at each other over the music, getting to the bottom of things like exams and betrayal. As we cruise through the hinterland of Liverpool, we pass something called the Liverpool Innovation Park that hardly inspires much hope for the future of this city. A soul-destroying wasteland, the centrepiece is a derelict, white warehouse that resembles an industrial power station designed by Albert Speer. The Führer would no doubt approve. If SWAYS ever takes on Liverpool, this will surely be its home.
At some point, I guess I’m going to have to let the world know that I’m really a teenage girl. Why carry on with this childish charade, this ruse of anonymity, this cowardly device? Why put up with all the frustrating misreadings and misogyny taunts when I’m XX all the way, sisters? I should just get it out there once and for all: I’m a precocious feminist music critic and future Orange Prize winner for the lesbo romp that will be the magnum opus of my twenties, all of which makes it far more respectable to be writing what is essentially a doe-eyed love letter to a bunch of boys and their errant leader, Jamie Lee, non? Because for once, incredibly, I find myself writing a review that’s motivated solely by the music, born of a show that’s as exciting as any I can remember since, well, probably since MONEY played for the first time at Sacred Trinity Church in the winter of 2011. Or the Marder in Berlin. I wasn’t planning to write a review of this gig. But as I casually make it back to Manchester at 5.08 p.m. the next day, I find myself drawn straight to my laptop with an urgent need to get this down, to remember what happened, to bear witness. Somebody needs to write a review of this gig, and this is not a responsibility I’m prepared to entrust to the people of Liverpool.
I missed the start. I was down a back alley being led astray by youths slugging from a bottle of cheap Rosé; but as we walk back upstairs, we make a big entrance. Flushed and heading to heaven, we can already hear Jamie Lee yelping, unaccompanied. We get to the top and almost bump into the singer on his hands and knees amongst the crowd. He looks like he’s lost his mind. I help him to his feet. He smiles like a new-born child. There’s a feint glimmer of recognition but this is a man who is elsewhere.
The band then launch into ‘Solong (God is Dead)’, and I immediately sense that this is going to be a MONEY show unlike any other I’ve seen before. Gone is the usual poise, the quasi-religious aura, the angelic tone. I remember the days when Jamie would stand on a chair at the back of the stage and the whole thing hinted at what bands might sound like in the afterlife. Tonight though, he seems either drunk or deranged. He’s all over the place. As he awkwardly pulls his guitar strap over his shoulder like he’s never seen one before in his life, I wonder whether he’s going to be able to play the thing at all. For a minute, I think we might be about to watch a complete car crash of a gig. Thankfully, the body, or the musical instinct, seems to have survived whatever devastation has been wrought on the brain, and the song is played tightly; impossibly perfect, in fact. The vocal is still hauntingly beautiful and swathed in warm reverb, but the performance is like some kind of exorcism. There’s something unhinged about Jamie as he writhes around the stage, wiggling his body like there’s not a bone in it, yelling every word as though his life depends on it. It’s utterly demented — but in a powerful and spontaneous way. There’s nothing contrived about it. He’s lost in the moment and it’s spellbinding. As the band runs through an extended, jammy version of their latest single ‘Bluebell Fields’, Jamie sits on the floor and wrestles with his guitar while new member Sam Denniston comes to the fore with eerie samples and synths. Scott Beaman and Charlie Cocksedge are more animated than I’ve ever seen them, feeding off the weird energy that’s in the air, and Billy Byron holds everything together with soft drum rolls and marching beats on the snare, hunched and attentive like a praying mantis.
The set closes with Jamie wobbling off the stage with the microphone stand, plonking it down in front of the spectators at the front, knocking it over, gradually untangling his guitar lead so that it reaches out to his new position, then performing a heart-rending version of ‘Who’s Going To Love You Now’ while continually fucking about with the stand so that the microphone is either absurdly high or absurdly low. He finishes the song and marches off through the crowd into the night, followed by the band. I wonder if any of them realise quite how special this performance has been.
Something is happening with this band and it’s happening now. They might never be this good again. It’s certainly hard to see how they can get much better. So, come along to their gig in Hebden Bridge on Friday night. Seems like half of Manchester will be there. We can pay our respects at Sylvia’s grave in Heptonstall then watch a group who seem to be possessed of her devouring spirit, producing the most incredible poetry in the void.
Photography © Natalie Curtis, 2013
Atrocity Boy 