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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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HELLWOOD The Mean Fiddler,
London, October 18th 2006 |
| Guitar
cradled in his arms, the tall, angular and slightly
awkward Jim
White leans down towards the microphone
and announces in his nasal southern burr, “We’re
Hellwood, and London, we’re here to blow you
away …..err….in a minute …You
ready Johnny?” To the left of the stage the
small and stocky Johnny
Dowd is fidgeting with his guitar,
stubbing out a cigarette and winning admiring glances
for his Travoltaesque shirt. And were it not for
the fact that these two share an obsession with
the darker things in life, both of them masters
of what might be called alt.country faux-gothic
god-soaked gloom, you might wonder what they are
doing on the same stage. Orange juice drinking Jim
lightens his noir with a wistful humour, a deep
sense of love and subtle musical complexity, and
he’d rather be at home changing the nappies
of his new two month old daughter than trapped in
one corner of the Mean Fiddler stage. “If
Johnny Dowd didn't exist, Quentin Tarantino would
have had to invent him” said London’s
Evening Standard. Whisk(e)y drinking roll-up smoking
Dowd (“in fact I’d drink just fucking
anything you gave me at this moment in time”)
gives the impression of being a taut bundle of latent
aggression (an impression supported by constant
references to the fight he’s supposed to have
had in Glasgow the previous night). He’s in
a confrontational bluesy punk-rock mood –
and in his dark world (“Johnny Dowd –
the kingpin of sin”) there’s no room
for humour (until, that is, he melts into a huge
smile - which to be honest he does at the end of
each song). |
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Yet
these two clearly have a deep rapport and considerable
mutual respect (“Did I tell you about my cock?”
goes a hypnotic and repetitive refrain to one of
Dowd’s songs, “Well yes Johnny, actually
you did, quite a lot” intones White by way
of reply). So much so that they’ve made an
album together, Chainsaw of Life, under the name
of Hellwood, with fellow Dowd collaborator Wille
B, drummer and bass-pedal player extraordinaire.
It’s a characteristically dark affair, almost
perhaps too sombre, which to be honest needed this
performance to bring it to life. |
| Tonight
the three of them are on stage, along with organist
Michael
Stark. The Mean Fiddler is pretty full
– mostly men, mostly mid-thirties plus and
mostly big Dowd or White fans (or both). It’s
clearly not a place for neutrals. Once Dowd sorts
himself out the band lash into ‘Alien tongue’
and ‘Man in a plaid suit’ – two
of the punkier songs from ‘Chainsaw’,
both sung by an animated White. Willie B’s
drumming is of the Animal school, his organ pedals
producing a booming backdrop for Dowd’s staccato
guitar – “now that’s what I call
rock and roll” mutters Dowd, clearly warming
up as he drawls his way through ‘God’s
back pocket’ – “I’m a human
stain on everything divine … a Romeo of spiritual
deviance”, supported by White who’s
using a child’s toy to distort his voice.
In the course of the evening they play the entire
album and by and large the songs get better and
stronger as they go on. There are some obvious winners,
‘A man loves his wife’ (“You know
a friend of mine heard that song and said Jim, you’ve
written a real beauty there, but I had to tell him
that my muse Johnny Dowd wrote most of the words”)
and the sharply ironic Katrina-inspired ‘Thank
you lord’ – another monotone Dowd vocal.
But a couple of songs that didn’t seem to
perform on the CD are real surprises here –
‘Firework factory’ (with a surprisingly
agitated ending from Jim White) and the simply superb
slow groove ‘Thomas Dorsey’, which unless
I’m mistaken Dowd hijacked with lyrics from
his song ‘No woman’s flesh but hers’.
The house is truly rocked – especially by
‘Spider in the room’ a really danceable
and funny tune written by White. “I’ve
got fucking spiders in my head” shouts the
swaying drunk next to me in a moment of absolute
silence. “Hmm” says Jim, “sounds
like you need some of that mental insecticide”.
Jim’s right. We move. |
| “This
is one of the moments everyone in the band likes
best” says Dowd, as White steps forward to
sing ‘God was drunk when he made me”.
White later tells a characteristically convoluted
story about a theological confrontation with country
star Sleepy
LaBeef provoked by the song as an introduction
to ‘A bar is just a church where they sell
beer’, a solo performance that helpfully allows
Dowd to recharge a glass or two. It’s during
this song that we all notice that the lighting rig
on the ceiling is shaking with a frightening degree
of fury, Poltergeist style – “Is that
you Sleepy?” asks White, “Is that you
Lord? Are you angry?” Actually it’s
the Kooks – or their gyrating teenage fans
- who are playing upstairs in the Pickle Factory,
but the dramatic effect is wonderful. A refreshed
Dowd returns to introduce, to everyone’s bewilderment,
a ZZ Top medley, performed by Willie B and Stark
(I think you can find it on the album they’ve
just released) before playing a heavy duty version
of his own ‘Ding dong’, and while White
gets almost all the toys out of his percussion toy
box, Dowd manages, as he has done a number of times
earlier, to sing, smoke, drink and play guitar at
the same time – a truly inspiring accomplishment.
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Jim
White and Johnny Dowd |
| And
after almost two hours they finish, ‘though
Dowd is looking as though he’s in the mood
to carry on all night. Instead, along with Willie
B and Jim he sets up the merchandise store where
they happily chat to their adoring fans –
while a few wait patiently as Michael Stark burns
them CD’s of the evening’s gig which
he’s taken as a live feed from the mixing
desk. Now there’s a first. - Nick Morgan
(photographs by Kate) |
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the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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