UNKLE (live) with The Duke Spirit
Somerset House, London
Saturday, July 12th 2008
The beautiful surroundings of the Embankment’s Somerset House make a suitably grand setting for tonight’s performances. One of the less conservative bills on offer during the series, it’s a delight – although somewhat of a dint in any attempts to ward off an early loss of hearing – that the sound system’s minimum volume appears to be set at eleven.
The Duke Spirit, here at the personal invitation of UNKLE’s main man James Lavelle, are on top form tonight. Tracks from their most recent album Neptune sound fabulous, developing an energy which has sometimes been tempered to their detriment on record. Liela Moss is blessed with a vocal ability which possesses welcome colour and an endearing warmth (especially evident on The Step And The Walk and Into The Fold), and just when you think they can’t further improve, they keep doing so. They could easily have played a set twice as long and still held the crowd’s attention.
The sight of a sizeable string orchestra slowly shuffling onstage is the first sign that UNKLE mean business tonight. The second is one Damon ‘Badly Drawn Boy’ Gough holding court on the river terrace before the band take to the stage.
Lavelle’s live band are all exhibitionists – not in a pejorative sense, I hasten to add – and, as such, they create a truly captivating show from the off. The man himself bounds onstage with enough energy to make the Duracell bunny feel inadequate, immediately taking an Ian Brown-esque vocal turn on Hold My Hand, the second song of the night.
And that’s before we even attempt to run through the rotating cast of guest vocalists. Clayhill’s Gavin Clark is a notable contributor, and on excellent form throughout, with Keys To The Kingdom standing out as a personal highlight from his numerous vocal turns.
Liela Moss also returns to the stage for a crowd-pleasing rendition of Mayday, and Alice Temple, Joel Cadbury and Damon Gough all turn in appearances (with a spirited Gough nonchalantly flinging the microphone stand into the crowd during Nursery Rhyme. Later in the evening, a polite plea from Gavin Clark for its return is granted as the aforementioned stand is crowd-surfed back to the stage.)
Alas, the all-star cast is not present in its entirety. Josh Homme and The Cult’s Ian Astbury are present only in recorded form for Restless and Burn My Shadow, two of the highlights from 2007′s astounding longplayer War Stories. As such, they lack the immediacy of the 100% live numbers. However, to thieve a line from Moloko’s Roisin Murphy, the atmosphere is still charged, thanks to visuals which prove to be equal parts frightening (especially Ian Brown’s giant luminous face floating behind the decks during Reign) and enticing, and an all-consuming sound which simply refuses to relent. UNKLE live manage to be loud without being totally overblown, which is no mean feat.
Lavelle, in contrast to the swaggering figure he cuts at the microphone and behind the decks, utters barely audible, modest pleasantries between songs, thanking all his musical guests at the close of the main set before gesturing to the crowd and adding “and all of you, of course. Without you, we’d be nothing.”
Come the encore, nobody predicts a surprise appearance from Lupe Fiasco, due to perform his own headlining set in a couple of nights’ time. He delivers a genre-bending rendition of Hello/Goodbye (a track which is sampled in UNKLE’s own Chemistry) that’s no less than brilliant, elevating the evening’s proceedings from very good to superb.
words and pictures: Kate Goodacre
The Summer Series runs at Somerset House until Saturday, July 19th – keep an eye out for forthcoming reviews of The Zutons with Noah and the Whale, and Duffy with Bryn Christopher.
UNKLE’s new album End Titles…Stories For Film is out now on Surrender All.
www.unkle.com
www.myspace.com/unkle
www.dukespirit.com
www.myspace.com/thedukespirit
Kate Goodacre is a freelance writer and photographer, and the founding editor of The Fugitive Motel. Her taste in music has been broadened greatly by her co-contributors over the years that the site and the Motel collective has been in business. Kate likes pink lady apples, recycling, open-wheeled motorsport, the smell of a well-kept park, the Today Programme and that strangely invigorating stillness you get in a city early on any weekend morning.