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Mansun Live - April 25th 1997
London Kilburn National, supported by Geneva
Taken from The Times, April 29 1997
| Reviews |
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| |
Taken from The Times, April 29 1997
MANSUN are not the sort of band to hang about. Since signing their record contract last year, they have scored a No. 1 album, Attack of the Grey Lantern, and five hit singles, apparently without breaking sweat (their sixth, Taxloss, was released yesterday).
Their live show was a similarly assured affair. Although in their early twenties, the four musicians from Chester were steeped in the stagecraft of an earlier generation. Lead guitarist Dominic Chad and bass player Stove struck heroic rock'n'roll poses reminiscent of their opposite numbers in The Clash, but toned down enough to play their parts with considerably greater accuracy. Singer and songwriter Paul Draper looked and sounded like a Damon Albarn understudy: cheekbones as angular as his vowels, lyrics and body language filtered through a truculent, smarter-than-thou attitude.
There was no shortage of hits for them to draw on and favourites including Stripper Vicar and Mansun's Only Love Song soon had the crowd bouncing enthusiastically on the spot. But as the band worked their way through a well-paced, tightly organised set, nagging doubts crept to the surface. The stage was lit with exceptional skill, but their performance suffered from an amateur sound mix, the oppressively distorted boom of Andie Rathbone's double-bass drum overwhelming all other instruments, including the rest of the drum-kit.
And for all the catchy appeal of numbers such as Egg Shaped Fred and their best song, Wide Open Space, Mansun lacked the heavyweight presence and true emotional authority of contemporaries such as Radiohead and Longpigs, bands who do this sort of angst-rock thing for real.
You could not fault Mansun for the performance, per se. But as they ended with a version of She Makes My Nose Bleed, climaxing with an onslaught of feedback and percussion effects, it seemed as if, rather like their irritatingly knowing song titles, what they had done best was to show us just how clever they are.
David Sinclair