Music > Live Reviews

Johnny Marr

05/11/18

 I never got to see The Smiths perform live, and Johnny Marr had packed up his guitar and left The Cribs by the time they played Latitude in 2011, so this gig at the Nick Rayns LCR was to be my first up-close encounter with the legendary guitarist

His third solo album (or fourth if you include 2003's Boomslang) was released in June of this year, and Marr and his band have been touring it since September.

Call The Comet is a prophetic piece, an album with a storyline set in the near future when intelligent aliens (Tracers) arrive to save planet Earth from its own plight. Marr denies that it is a 'concept album', preferring to describe it as 'a collection of songs with a unifying theme', and with the tour being labelled as the Call The Comet Tour, it comes as no surprise that tracks from it feature heavily in the running order. It is not a 'great' album – conceptually and lyrically it is a bit clichéd, but let's face it, if it means I get to listen and watch Johnny Marr play guitar for 90 minutes then my money and time is being well spent.

The man himself remains unbelievably youthful, perfectly at ease as leader of his own band. Into his jet black mop-top has been introduced a fashionable streak of white, and underneath the leather jacket he sports a white floral shirt that Mozza himself would covet. From the opening of The Tracers, taken from the new album, his performance remains confident, amiable and assured, and the band are tight and well-rehearsed (as is the guitar tech, who never fails to arrive with a perfectly tuned instrument between every song).

And, although we are to be treated to almost every track from the new album during the evening, the familiar introduction to Bigmouth Strikes Back shows early on that Marr is not going to disappoint the hundreds of Smiths fans in the house by pretending that those glory years of '82 to '87 never happened. Bigmouth is the first of six Morrissey-Marr compositions to be strategically dropped into the set, although it is the haunting Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loves Me that nearly brings a tear to my eye whilst the entire audience join in with arms aloft. Vocally he never attempts to mimic the original versions, but there is an unmistakable empathy in the way that every one of those songs is reverentially resurrected tonight. The years spent with Bernard Sumner in Electronic are not overlooked either, with Getting Away With It introduced as 'a disco song from Manchester, England', and Get The Message following as an authentic early-nineties banger. Only Easy Money and Boys Get Straight survive from Marr's solo back catalogue in tonight's show, so it is another Smiths song, How Soon Is Now, that brings the main set to an emotional climax.

The encore consists of Rise (the opening track off Call The Comet) and the new single, Spiral Cities, but concludes with There Is A Light That Never Goes Out, a song that some might see as an olive branch to his former mate Stephen. Perhaps a Smiths reunion could, one day, still happen?

Support tonight came from Chilli Jesson's new band, Crewel Intentions, with a sound far removed from Palma Violets, but which has Jesson's snake-hipped moves, high kicks and air-punching giving a physical energy to the set, whilst he repeatedly makes a point of establishing direct eye contact with members of the audience. Crewel Intentions' material has a strongly melodic, almost cinematic feel. The keyboards create a flavour that reminded me of The Byrds, or more recently The Coral. Jesson himself brings a Bad Seeds darkness to the table that marks this out as a band most definitely to watch.