There’s something calling in the air tonight and it’s sure as hell not anything Phil Collins has sung about recently! It’s surprisingly cold after a lovely day of Birmingham sunshine but there’s band shirts everywhere and in fact if there’s to be a tenuous reference this early on to a completely unrelated but yet well loved song it has to be that, given the aforementioned temperature, shivers in antici….. pation abounded! Whiffing vaguely of curry (but not Tim, that’s a malicious rumour!) myself after having indulged in one of the local specialities, I’m ready for something I’ve awaited for years. Skunk Anansie are in town and I’m on the guest list!
Now, it’s been 30 years since the debut album ‘Paranoid & Sunburnt’ landed on my lap, and in all honesty after the first three albums life took over, as did the way we consume music, and thus it’s fair to say I’ve been lax in keeping up in what exactly Skin et al. have been up to, although on saying that I recall being very pleased when Deborah Dyer (Skin, but you knew that, right?!) was awarded an OBE back in 2021.
So, what to expect Wiseman? Wanting to be prepared I’d spent the previous couple of hours consuming information (and curry) from the wonderfully useful Setlist.fm website (not the curry!) which provides not just information on songs played, but also lists the demographics for how many songs from individual albums are played, and this told me that of the expected 21 songs, 9 were from the albums I knew. Not a bad ratio, especially given there were also due 4 songs from the upcoming new album ‘The Painful Truth’. Hardly likely to have encountered those when they’re not released yet! Happy days!
The venue is already rammed as we trundle through the doors and I have to give out a shout to the O2 Academy security staff here, who handed out water all night to people who’d dressed for the cold and suddenly and quite possibly unexpectedly found themselves sardined together in a heaving mass of middle-aged clingy panted females and leather clad guys, (although on several occasions I noticed this dynamic had been swapped!). The support band, ‘So Good’, were already on stage, three youngish lasses and a couple of balaclava clad guitarists, playing a curious mix of punk pop which quite a selection of the crowd seemed to know, and if not, they certainly appreciated judging by the reactions. Six songs of sweary fun ensued and if nothing else they left a positive impression on an audience. The last track, titled “I Rewrote the F**king Bible” gives you an idea as to what they were about.
A 35 minute wait ensued…
My clingy panted somewhat vertically challenged companion and I, (sporting normal pants, and a leather because I too fit with the demographic!), made the conscious choice not to hit the bar so as to not lose our place near the front and we were suitably rewarded with a decent view of the stage when the lights went down. ‘This Means War’ as an opener set the stage well for what was to come. Skin, dressed in something akin to a boiler suit crossed with a kimono, launched into a performance like her life depended on it, and frankly kept it up for the full 21 song set! At 57 years old “impressive!” is the only adjective which fully sums this up. With a riff borrowed in tone and fiddled with from Led Zeppelin’s ‘Heartbreaker’ you’re always going to hit a jackpot as a first up track, and then with it swiftly followed up by ‘Charlie Big Potato’ the scene was set nicely. Skin’s voice is on form and a long loud well held note this early on again served to show she meant business!
There’s a very definite set up it feels within the concert. The better known songs are interspersed with new and lesser ones really well, meaning that the audience maintains their enthusiasm for the full evening, something which other bands might well look at, especially nowadays with concert tickets reaching eyewatering prices and so, keeping the audience engaged is imperative if you’re going to encourage people to come again. The water, as mentioned earlier, was seriously well received too, although brine would’ve been probably more appropriate given the whole canned fish analogy. “Because of You” goes down like a hooker offered a £100 tip, (I lived in the Netherlands for 9 years, I know about these things from osmosis rather than personal experience… *coughs*), much like “Weak” and “Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good)” as we all relived the angst ridden days of our now long lost youth and the very many mixed tapes we made using these and the ever ready to add to your emotional destruction track “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette. In all honesty they were performed brilliantly, and the inclusions/insertions of newer tracks worked really well in order to introduce the crowd to them while already in a receptive state.
Musically the show is driven by an almost innocuous bass player to the right of the stage, but his output really keeps everything tight. Richard ‘Cass’ Lewis I believe his name is, and it needs acknowledging how much of an important part of Skunk Anansie he is. Interestingly at the venue the sound engineer seems to know this and has the volume and depth of his playing at a level where it reverberates through the crowd as something literally palpable. He gets an acknowledgement on stage as well as something of a solo, albeit small, on the 17th song of the night, “Cheers”. The guitarist Martin Kent, also gets the same opportunity on a couple of tracks, most notably on tracks 14 and 15, “Yes It’s Fucking Political” and “Tear the Place Up”, but this concert is very much a band performance, and as such it feels like solos are not something which fit within that dynamic, which is what makes both of these demonstrations of skill on their instruments worth noticing.
Skin lets loose with something of a political self-expression lecture a third of the way through, preceding “God Only Loves You” which seemed to go down well with a crowd who punctuated points with loud cheers. It’s something of a dangerous game these days to be telling people that we should all love each other but she knows her audience and they know her. It’s very ‘Rage Against the Machine’-esque monologue but I’m all for that sort of thing. “Yes it’s Fucking Political”!!
“Secretly”, straight after this, is something rather more soulful. The audience sway, the band relax, and for a while the anger is almost forgotten, until the follow up “Weak” is launched into. For me this was probably the most anticipated song of the eve and the gusto of both audience and band as it’s performed suggests that’s a sentiment shared by everyone here. Only “Hedonism” matches this, and a visibly emotional performance from Skin matches that mood. There’s a Led Zeppelin nod as the band is introduced after “Hedonism” at the end of the night and I’m reminded of how much the first song dropped ‘Led Zeppelin 2’ into my head and couldn’t help but wonder as to if this was a coincidence or if it was planned.
Ending the night was a song coming straight off the new album, due out in May, called ‘Lost and Found’, which was probably the most easy listening radio friendly song of the night something which really wont do Skunk Anansie any harm at all if they’re looking on broadening their audience to newer people via the charts or airtime. If that acts as an introduction for younger people to the past catalogue I’m all for such things. I left the gig, complete with a now somewhat claustrophobic companion, thoroughly sated after years of needing to scratch my Skunk Anansie itch.
It was absolutely worth the wait.
Track Listing
This Means War
Charlie Big Potato
Because of You
An Artist Is an Artist
I Believed in You
Love Someone Else
God Loves Only You
Secretly
Weak
I Can Dream
Twisted (Everyday Hurts)
My Ugly Boy
Animal
Yes It’s Fucking Political
Tear the Place Up
Little Baby SwastikkkaEncore:
Cheers
Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good)
Whole Lotta Love
(Led Zeppelin cover)
The Skank Heads (Get Off Me)
