Due to the unusually early start, 7.20pm, we unfortunately missed the first two support acts, Lyenn and Duke Garwood, but did arrive just in time to catch Creature With The Atom Brain. Now CWTAB are a curious beast, comprised mostly of members of The Mark Lanegan band and led by Tim Vanhamel of the band Millionaire.
When I got their album a few weeks ago I have to confess I didn’t really ‘get’ it. Not that it’s bad in any way I just didn’t get any feel from it. Live however, things start to make a bit more sense. They essentially play a blues rock infused grunge that lends itself much more to the live setting than on record.
After a somewhat pedestrian start with the appropriately dirge like ‘The Funeral’ they soon got in to their groove with, in my opinion, the best track from the album, ‘Hit The Sky’ and ‘The Colour Of Sundown’. They are then joined by Garwood for a couple of rollicking numbers before closing their short set with ‘Transylvania’, an absolute corker of a psych rock freak out. Now that’s more like it! More like this please boys.
While maybe not entirely to my taste, CWTAB certainly did a good job of getting a by now absolutely rammed Forum pumped up for the main event.
After a brief break for on stage scene shifting, on strides Mark Lanegan, creator of so much of my favourite music from the last 20 years, my generation’s very own man in black. Lanegan is something of an enigma as a live performer, he rarely smiles, hardly acknowledges the audience, there’s no banter, almost no movement yet somehow he is still the focus of every eye in the room, not so much charisma as PRESENCE, like a black hole of attention. Utterly mesmerising. And then, of course, there is that voice. That almighty, soul searing, baritone rumble.
When you have a back catalogue as vast and as brilliant as Lanegan’s lord only knows how you pick a set but tonight he treats us to a 19 song guided tour of the canon, even including something of a rare treat in a Screaming Trees song, ‘Black Rose Way’.
It’s hard to pick highlights of a set where every song is delivered with heart rending passion but the definite standout moments for me were ‘Hit The City’, still a beast of a tune even without the PJ Harvey backing vocal, the deep desert rock of ‘Phantasmagoria Blues’ and an absolutely blistering encore of ‘Hangin Tree’ a track that first surfaced on one of the Desert Sessions albums and later as one of the stand out moments on Queens Of The Stoneage’s seminal ‘Songs For The Deaf’.
In between we get a smattering of the psych disco from this year’s ‘Blues Funeral’ that make so much more sense live, getting the audience in to a proper groove and some choice cuts from his earlier works.
It’s during some of the slower, darker numbers, like ‘Wedding Dress’ or ‘Harborview Hospital’, that one realises that performing live is not necessarily something that Lanegan likes to do but something he needs to do, something he’s driven to do, his outlet for the inner darkness. Perhaps this is what makes him such a captivating performer, that knowledge that every note is sincere and heartfelt.
Then, after a ripping ‘Methamphetamine Blues’, he disappears back in to the night with a gruff thanks and a mind blown crowd stumble out in to the cold London night, aware that they have witnessed a performer of consummate skill and spell binding power.
Posted by Dan. Photos by Hannah Morgan. See the full photo set here.
