The Glee Club, Cardiff Bay
Sun 28 Oct
words: PAUL O’BRIEN
★★★★☆
Nominally emasculated opening act Dub Party provide the elevator music for tonight’s forthcoming Sermon On The Mount, and much like Christ’s warm-up acts, they’re on a sticky wicket in terms of being memorable. Perhaps accordingly after a couple of tunes it makes perfect sense to start telling us about their Facebook presence and so forth, but as we’ve already turned up they’re preaching to the converted. The spell is broken, like answering your phone whilst shagging. The musical equivalent of going to Chapter for a pint, there’s plenty of bright light and noise, but little meaningful communication unless you’re already acquainted. I have some sort of seizure at this point, and in the first of the evening’s Strange Occurrences, suddenly find myself outside in the rain, smoking.
Somewhere beneath the building, furnaces are being stoked with ironic sports satchels and plain glass spectacles. The professorial Upsetters assemble and attend; switches are thrown. Cut-glass keys and rhythm splitting beats like atoms, all with the precision of a NASA launch, and the Ark slips its deep bass moorings. And behold here’s Lee Scratch, a burning tiger padding through the bush, to give blessings: “I am here,” he declares, “to prove that God is alive”. The building moves.
Perry’s voice, uncannily, is as clear-cut and consistent as his studio recordings. He’s prowling, dropkicking demons and laying on hands. “I conquer bad luck, I conquer unluck… I conquer the chicken, I conquer the duck.” He’s speaking in tongues from a strange place, which prompts a look of concern from even the band at one point. Yet he deflects all doubt. He’s on fire.
“Open up your heart, open up your mind, open up your brain,” he intones. It’s unclear at this point whether his magnificent millinery is protective, or an accumulation of pop detritus attracted by the gravity of his swede. “I love you; you love I. Together we will fly,” he vows, “and touch the sky.”
The undercover police have given up and gone native. “How the fuck do I write about that?” I enquire of a qualified theologian and philosopher conveniently at hand. “One word,” he says. “‘Great’.”