Public Image Ltd. 'End Of World UK Tour' Review - 23rd September, Holmfirth Picturedrome
Public Image Ltd. 'End Of World UK Tour' Review at Holmfirth Picturedrome - Post-Punk Legends Deliver a Stellar Set With an Odd Deficit of New Material
For a start, the venue itself seemed almost purpose-built for a gig like this. Attached to a small bar, and with a capacity of around 650, it created a sense of intimacy that PiL gigs usually flourish in, almost as if you could feel the energy and sweat in the air. That kind of real, tight knit vibe works really well for their purposes, with John saying repeatedly that he thrives off of eye contact and closeness with the audience, and eye contact-a-plenty he gets, but I’m getting slightly ahead of myself. Up first was Dublin-based one man punk band Meryl Streek, entering stage in a flat cap and black-and-white striped shirt, like Captain Birdseye’s rebel cousin, and even upon reflection, I still can’t really make heads or tails of him. His approach isn’t dissimilar to many of his post-punk contemporaries, delivering snarling, often misanthropic spoken word in a thick Irish accent on the general shitness of life, atop rumbling, dirty, D.I.Y. instrumentation. There are definitely times where this works pretty effectively, particularly around the halfway point with tracks like the orchestra stab infused ‘Demon’ or ‘Educated Mates.’ Here, not only is his spoken word, and indeed parts of the music, as furious and raging as a rabid dog, making you feel as though you’re caught in a musical vortex, but there’s also a deeply touching element to parts of it as well, where the profound sense of tragedy that informs the anger comes into full view, which when combined with a cool, spiralling light show, makes for a really cinematic and intense moment, while still hitting you like a ton of bricks. I’ll say this as well, what he maybe lacked in stage presence, spending a lot of the set walking back and forth like a caged panther with handheld torch, he mostly made up for in the pure conviction and bile behind his delivery and viewpoint. So while the repetitive refrains on ‘Paddy’ wasn’t my favourite, the content of the song itself (a moving tribute to his deceased uncle), and the power and force he delivers it with really have to be commended, with his subsequent move through the crowd yet another display of the venue’s intimacy working a treat. It wasn’t a perfect set by any means though. As I said, sometimes the pure bluntness of his approach worked, and likely struck quite a chord with a fair few people, but other times, at least to me, the lack of wit or wordplay just made some of the commentary seem a bit overly hamfisted or clumsy, as if you were literally just being shouted at over music and that’s it. Speaking of the music, again, it had its moments, but a lot of it just felt relatively generic in the grand scheme of things, either consisting of belligerent, grindy bass’d rock, or industrially tinged electronic beats, with a lot of the string passages just seeming like a token effort to feel deep. I’d describe it like this, he takes the same general ideas as say a Sleaford Mods or a John Paul, but doesn’t quite have the lyrical dexterity, musical originality, or stage presence to pull it off. In spots perhaps, but I don’t think he’s fully quite there yet. He’s certainly interesting though, so give him a listen if you can, and you may well be pleasantly surprised.
Then, after a short break scored by a pretty great dub reggae playlist, the group finally took to the stage and the crowd went nuts. I’ll say this straight away, this PiL lineup is far-and-away the most stable in its history, and it’s clear to see why. Made up of bass player extraordinaire Scott Firth, ex-Slits beatmaster Bruce Smith, and guitar virtuoso and Jesus lookalike Lu Edmonds, it becomes clear straight away that these guys are some damn fine musicians. After all, being able to play all different kinds of music from PiL’s varied catalogue and make it fit is not easy, and yet they manage it without a hitch. Soon after their arrival, John, sporting a trademark spiked hairdo and suit jacket marched onstage, and the adulation from the crowd was clear to see. PiL were back. Let’s fucking do this. The band waste no time bursting into new album opener ‘Penge’, which seems a great way to start, not only for the obvious reasons, but as I said in my original blog post, the track with its slamming grooves, fiery riffs and triumphant refrains give it a really cool, victorious feel, like the band pulling up on their viking warship, ready for battle. Of course John gives a great performance here, as operatic and expressive as it is brooding, showing that even after everything that’s happened over the last four-or-so years, he’s still got it. Quickly though, we switch gears completely, going from the lively galanting of ‘Penge’, to the dark, dubby stomp of ‘Albatross’, an all time PiL classic, and it doesn’t take a genius to understand why. I’m not quite sure exactly how to describe it, but it’s one of those tracks that just has a completely unique vibe about it, that when it starts playing, you just get completely lost in the evil psychedelia of it all, almost like it’s a living, breathing thing. This is in large part thanks to the fact that, while Bruce and Scott lay down a great, tight, deep groove at the base, that then allows Lu’s screeching guitar lines and John’s wild, untamed hollering to just go absolutely mad over top, like the post-punk equivalent of a Jackson Pollock painting: Bruce and Scott are the canvas, Lu and John the paints. Furthermore, Lu’s guitar playing on this track is absolutely superb, as it is on basically every track, but the way his bright, searing melodies wail and screech atop the groove with effortless improvisation is a wonder to behold, and the gravitas and vocal dexterity that John brings to the table certainly can’t be understated either, only working further to solidify the sense of pure creepiness, ominousness and evil it gives off. Great, progressive, screeching, deep, dubby evil. Following that we have a fan favourite from the new album, in the form of student-bashing ‘Being Stupid Again.’ Now some may dismiss this track as simply some rather sad “old man yells at cloud” fodder ranting about young people with their marxism and their do-goodery, and I can kind of see that, but to me there’s a bit more humour to it than that. It’s almost like John sees that characterisation and plays into it to a degree, and having a fair bit of fun doing so. After all, maybe it’s just me, but I just can’t imagine a circumstance where someone would insult somebody else by calling them a “minge” unironically. Even when you take the lyrics away though, it would be hard to deny that the track has a pretty killer, danceable groove behind it, and a pretty damn menacing, heavy guitar riff to boot. I saw a review comparing this particular riff to a power drill, and they're really not far off, and as I said before, while definitely informed by the fun he’s having with the lyrics, John’s boisterous and animated delivery is a real treat here, the perfect icing on the cake, perhaps because you can tell he’s really enjoying himself with this one, but whatever the case, it goes over very well.
Up next though, is for me far and away the crown jewel of the set. In the two times I’d seen PiL in the last five years, they hadn’t played what I consider my favourite ever PiL song, so when I saw they’d added it for this tour I was ecstatic. That song is ‘Poptones.’ It’s considered by quite a few past members to be their favourite PiL songs too, and it’s clear to see why. It’s simply because every element of it works flawlessly. The looping dub bassline is endlessly slick, deep, and cool sounding, the groove is pounding and steady, giving it a great sense of momentum, John’s performance is brilliantly expressive and attention grabbing, with a palpable tragedy as well, lended to by the dark, morbid lyrics. The piece de resistance though is of course the guitar line. Not having any particular structure to it, Lu effortlessly weaves between the beautiful, romantic motifs of the original in a freeform, dreamy haze, creating what can only be described as an absolutely euphoric vibe. It all came together perfectly, and I loved every second of it. I’d happily sit and watch them play it for half an hour if given the chance. It’s at this point the band decides it’s time for a dance, which I’m more than happy with, breaking into their biggest hit, ‘This Is Not A Love Song’, which in the live setting in recent years has gone through a serious evolution, going from a very good albeit cheesy, horn-backed stomper, into an absolute disco rock rager, complete with a brilliant, bouncing beat, bright, colourful keyboards, and the guitars even lending a bit of psychy, eastern raga to proceedings. It sounds like an odd mix, sure, but it absolutely rocks. Some may critique this song by saying it’s a bit thin on the ground lyrically, but whatever the case it’s still really damn catchy, and John’s natural charisma and vocal theatrics help it a million times over, as well as Lu’s world music inspired guitar playing being utilised very well in the bridge to add a bit of drama and tension. One thing I should mention too, the crowd up until this point had been relatively placid, so it was super cool to see the moshpit fully liven up when this song came on. Let me tell you, middle aged people know how to party. The dancing continued with the next track, but in a much more tragic circumstance, as ‘Death Disco’ began. This has to be one of the greatest, yet oddest tracks in the PiL cannon. Written about John’s mother’s slow, cancerous death, and led melodically by a sharp, metallic interpolation of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Swan Lake’, the track’s overwhelming sense of tragedy and eeriness is absolutely unignorable, yet they underscore that with a pumping disco beat and grooving bassline, creating a really weird sense of cognitive dissonance on the part of the audience. It feels completely wrong dancing to a song like that, and yet people were, including myself, but I think that conflict plays into its power. John’s performance is also far and away one of his most powerful of the evening, and it’s clear why. John has often said that the song is incredibly painful to perform, often tearing up while performing, as he did here incidentally, but once again that just adds to the force of it, as while he wails, bellows and screams out the lyrics with great power, you can sense the pain and anguish in his voice, making it a genuinely flooring, emotional moment. John has also said that over the years, as his loved ones have passed on, from his father, to his stepdaughter and many others, the song accrews much more significance. This is visible, perhaps most poingantly so tonight, where at the conclusion of the song, a somewhat emotionally drained John looks to the sky wistfully. “Aloha, Nora.” Safe to say the applause that follows is not only one of admiration and gratitude, but pure support and utter respect.
The dark, eerie mood continues for the following couple numbers in the set, but with a much more unorthodox sonic slant, starting with ‘The Room I Am In.’ This deep cut from the 2012 ‘This Is PiL’ album might seem a very weird choice for a live track, with it being an atmospheric spoken word piece, but as a member of the band said in an interview recently, to paraphrase, “when we get it right, it has a real eerie, creepy vibe about it”, and they’re right. Lu’s slinking, sour guitars and Scott’s deep bass work nicely as a dark, airy backdrop to John’s descriptions of the dark council flats in which he grew up, delivering the words with a fittingly brooding authority. It’s not the most high impact moment of the set, nowhere near, but as far as interstitial moments go, it’s certainly an effective tone setter for what follows, the song in question being 1981’s avant-garde, percussive excursion ‘Flowers of Romance.’ Despite its oddity, whenever I’ve heard this track live on YouTube or wherever, it’s always been a real treat, and I’m happy to report that seeing it in person for the first time, it didn’t disappoint. Not only is there a really cool, lolloping, tribal tom groove at the core of this track that Bruce does very well to maintain, but the sinister, atmospheric melodic flourishes Lu and Scott provide lend really nicely to its murky, otherworldly presentation. Simply put, any song that involves seeing a guy playing an electric saz with a violin bow gets extra “awesome” points in my book. Not only that, but at the climax in the first half of the track, the layers of dark, foreboding, and incredibly intense strings Scott adds via the keyboards gives it a real sense of high drama in amongst the ghoulishness. Talking of Scott actually, he really really shines here. Namely, while the first half of the track was entirely bassless, relegating him to keys, in the second half, he rips out his double bass, and plays perhaps one of the meanest double bass riffs on the planet. Rubbery, morphing, otherworldly, esoteric, but most importantly, deep as all hell. It’s fantastic. John really gives it his all here too, lending to the craziness with one of his most expressive and untamed performances of the night, yelling, warbling and hollering all over the place like a mad punk shaman conducting his musical ritual. It is definitely among their less accessible tunes, but they take you on a hell of a ride with it. The world music influences continue on with ‘Memories’, combining a Jamaican-style dub reggae bassline with Spanish flamenco guitars and punchy dance beats. Even if you don’t like PiL, you do have to admit that a lot of their grooves are absolutely rock solid, this being no exception. Granted, I maybe didn’t find it as fiery or energetic and punchy as some of the other “dance tracks” in the set so far, but it was still very enjoyable nonetheless. Saying that though, what did seem energised here was John’s performance. I would call John’s performance style a lot of things: esoteric, distinctive, sharp, cutting, dynamic, emotive, flamboyant perhaps, but energetic isn’t necessarily one of them for the most part. I don’t mean that as a detriment, I just don’t think a lot of PiL tracks really call for a particularly fast paced, unleashed energy per se. Here though, you could hear that there was a real serious urgency and a fire and a passion behind his delivery which was very infectious, that in addition to its pre-existing danceability, helped enhance the vibe of the track just that bit more that I think it needed.
To start off the final quintet of the main set, we're treated to a performance of new single 'Car Chase' (apparently one of Nora's favourites from the new record). Sadly though, this is maybe the first time in the set where something properly felt a bit off. Essentially the little gripes I had with ‘Memories’ were starting to show themselves a little bit more. Now don’t get me wrong, the track itself didn’t sound bad at all really: the guitar lines were certainly catchy, the beats and bass lines were cool, and once again John seemed very energised here, delivering the lyrics with an enjoyable emphasis and bombasity that fit it’s generally catchy nature quite well. I just can’t really place it, but there wasn’t that much “fire” coming through in the performance here. On record the track is very bouncing and grooving and bright and lively, whereas here, everything they were playing was the same, but it just felt a little bit sluggish or lacking in momentum to be honest, which is a real shame because as you can probably tell I like the track a lot. This sluggishness was maybe borne out by the fact that, when I looked at the band onstage, it was the first time that they seemed kind of bored playing a track so far, despite John doing what I can to lift it. It might’ve just been that because the performance of this track felt slightly off that I was looking for something in nothing as it were, but I still thought it notable. It’s also at this point that I noticed what I would say is maybe the biggest gripe with the show overall. For a tour called ‘End of World Tour’, we didn’t actually get a lot of songs from the new, 13-track album, and of the three we did get, two were pre-release singles. Compare that to the ‘What The World Needs Now…’ tour where they played upwards of six of the eleven songs from that, and it seems a bit odd, more like a revamped ‘Greatest Hits’ tour with the new singles slotted in. It’s not a world ender or anything, no pun intended, but I definitely would’ve liked to hear a few more. ‘The Do That’, ‘North West Passage’ or the title track I think would’ve done particularly well. However, the back-to-back combo of ‘The Body’ and ‘Warrior’ do well to bring things back up a notch, injecting the set with some welcome 80s style swagger, ‘The Body’ with its dramatic, soaring, anthemic stadium guitar leads and tight, punchy grooves, and ‘Warrior’ with it’s pulsing disco beats, epic guitar soundscapes, grand-scale, electronic new wave-isms and rebellious, anti-authoritarian lyrics, like ‘Penge’s rainbow coloured uncle, if that makes any sense at all. If you listened to these tracks on record, you’d be right in thinking they might sound a bit incongruous and dated in context of the set, but, as Scott noted in an interview, “the thing was taking the material [from all the different albums] and making it sound like it’s all coming from the same place”, which these revamped, modern renditions are great examples of, with John’s more unkempt vocal style in his older age giving them a rough, sharp, more unpredictable edge which is great. Most importantly of all though, everyone seemed to have a blast playing them, as the crowd did hearing them. How else could you end a modern PiL set, but with the hilarious, swear-laden, yet endlessly funky ‘Shoom?’ Originally inspired by John’s father, he informs us it’s now just as relevant to some gentlemen called “Paul, Steve, and Bone Fucking Idol.” John’s not been shy recently about commenting on his Pistols bandmates’ escapades following a recent lawsuit, and safe to say I don’t think that’ll be stopping any time soon. In any case, simply put, the beats are fantastic and groovy as hell, the bassline brilliantly deep and rumbling, the guitar work super, psychedelic, immense, tense and dramatic, and I don’t care who you are, a song where the lyrics nearly every other word are “bollocks”, “fuck”, “shit” or “tits” will never not be funny, lest we forget though, delivered with a seemingly primal sense of rage and bubbling anger, yet also good humour, that makes it such a compelling track to end on. So it’s at this note that the band exit the stage to thunderous applause and cheering from the hundreds in attendance, though not before John gives us a helpful bit of life advice: “drink formaldehyde.” Cheers John.
Except of course, that wasn’t the last we heard of the mighty quartet for the evening, as after a short break the group re-emerge for a final, three song encore. Up first is the band’s namesake track ‘Public Image.’ Characterised by a fantastic, effortlessly swagger filled bassline, bright, fiery guitar chords, endlessly catchy melodies, and a vibrant sense of defiance, it was initially the track meant to act as a metaphorical unchaining of John from his “Rotten” tabloid image into his own, genuine personality. Now though, listening to it forty five years later, it feels much more like PiL taking a well deserved victory lap at the longevity of their success, and the sense of pure energy and jubilation radiating from both the music and the chanted, singalong vocals in its short run time is an absolute joy to behold. It’s a song that really makes you feel on top of the world. Since the band’s reformation in 2009, ‘Open Up’ has always been an absolute barnstormer live, and it remains the case to this day. Originally taking shape as Lydon collaborating with legendary dance group Leftfield to create a brilliantly dark, thumping, and cinematic piece of progressive house, in PiL’s hands, it’s now a brilliantly dark, thumping, and cinematic piece of progressive house, played just as loudly and bombastically, but with rock instrumentation, and the end result is as awesome as it sounds, John’s vocals as wry, yet sinister and savage as ever. I’m tempted to say that their new live version is a leg up on the original, but A. I absolutely love both so it doesn’t really matter anyway, and B. I’m probably biassed. Point being, it’s brilliant, enough said. Finally though, before the band ride into the metaphorical sunset, they still have one more trick up their sleeves, as the emphatic South African rhythms of ‘Rise’ begin to reverberate across the venue, and the crowd whoop deafeningly in response. Since its release over thirty five years ago, ‘Rise’ has kind of become PiL’s de facto anthem as it were, possibly because it demonstrates the group at the height of their powers, sounding just as good as it did in 1986. In my eyes, it shows everything that’s great about PiL: the great world music influences coming through in the motoring beats and elastic, melodic, relentlessly funky bass, the blissfully melodic, summery, anthemic guitar lines and subtle string passages, and with John offering more catchy refrains than you can shake a stick at, while not sacrificing his confrontational and spiky delivery and lyrical style one bit. Most bands would contrive writing a hands-in-the-air arena rock festival tune, PiL just went and did it, in spectacular fashion. The highlight of the track comes in the bridge though, where, after some superbly acrobatic soloing from Lu, the crowd join Mr. Lydon in mantra-like chanting of arguably his most iconic and poignant lyric: “anger is an energy.” A statement as relevant now as ever I’m sure you’ll agree, and one that with every repetition grows higher and higher in intensity and volume, with John giving every last bit of energy he has to close out the evening in truly spectacular fashion, to the point where I think he’ll either throw his lungs up or jump out of his own skin. In any case, it was a great way to cap off a fantastic night, however as a last parting word, band stood to the side, John issues one more task to the audience, one that gives an answer to a question I had going into the gig: why was ‘Hawaii’ played on the opening night in Sheffield, then removed after John said we could expect to hear it? “I can’t sing the song, cos if I did, I’d fucking die, but I’d really appreciate it if you could all say “aloha” to Nora for me.” There’s not a great deal I can say about this, other than that the sight of John damn near bursting into tears at the crowd’s rapturous applause is one of the most moving things I’ve seen at any gig I’d ever been to. Tragic, but utterly beautiful at the same time. It’s an example of the truest form of catharsis, and maybe the most stark example of John Lydon’s eternal motto in action: “everything I do, it comes from the heart.”
In conclusion, this was probably the best PiL show of the three I’ve seen. The music was absolutely top notch (what more would you expect from Lydon’s longest serving backing group?) and John himself was as energised as he’s ever been, putting on what can only be described as a truly electrifying display, which is particularly remarkable given the circumstances, as he channels his grief into a flooringly powerful performance. Would I have liked to hear a bit more new stuff? Sure, but in all honesty, even if no new material got played whatsoever, it would undoubtedly still go down as one of the best gigs of the year so far.
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