PUBLIC IMAGE LTD | LIVE REVIEW
Tramshed, Cardiff, Tue 21 June
Public Image Ltd has always been a cult in the music scene, drawing aging punk rockers and ravers together every year in what can only be likened to a PiL Church service. Since reforming in 2009, PiL have reinstated their old manifesto to always push their sound forward musically; playing the tour circuit over the last few years, they’ve cemented themselves as an amazingly tight live band.
Tonight, they take the stage like a tight-knit gang. John Lydon, with his arms starched out, is dressed like a punk butcher with a chequered smock – placing his lyric book onto a music stand then stoically standing there, as if about to conduct the crowd like an orchestra. Which, essentially, he does. Lydon’s vocals are so emotionally cutting, giving everything he has to the audience: his voice here is the best I’ve heard it out of the last couple of times I’ve seen PiL live.
The band itself is tight as hell. Bruce Smith, Lu Edmonds and Scott Firth come together to create an industrial trance sound that bellows throughout the venue. The gig is peppered with both deep cuts and greatest hits of PiL’s catalogue, the crowd standing to drunken attention and slurred along when Lydon belted out This Is Not A Love Song, Rise and Public Image. Between songs, the frontman swigs from a bottle of whisky, swirling it around his mouth then spitting it out, the only punk rock way to coat your throat.
The highlight of the night is the crunching, pulsating version of Death Disco, while it ends with Shoom off 2015 album What The World Needs Now, John conducting the crowd to shout “fuck you!” at the stage. Once again, PiL send me home feeling like I was 100 feet off the ground, in musical heaven. I can’t recommend seeing them live enough: it really is a religious experience minus the ‘Bollocks’.
words and photos JAYDON MARTIN