With one brand new song and the Love band playing more confidently than ever, this was the Arthur Lee bonus gig to complement last year's triumphant tour.He is looking very comfortable tonight - and the band members are no longer just side men. Mike Randall struts about and Rusty Squeezebox shares jokes with The Man. Mike's stinging guitar breaks are longer and louder than I remember from last year and he even puts a foot on a centre stage monitor for part of one solo. The band sound is rich and loud and bursting with energy. Arthur Lee dominates it with physical presence and a rich singing voice that seems to get better and better.
The Edwardian charm of The City Varieties Theatre has been a real success for the likes of Sigur Ros, Yo La Tengo and Janis Ian. But (like the shirt he's wearing tonight) it's just a bit tight for a rock charismatic the size of Arthur Lee. His music blazes out for close contact and mass leaping about and the City Varieties fixes it all back just a step and its small sloping stage is a restriction to his restless spirit.
Not that any of that is going to stop him. The songs are virtually the whole of Forever Changes plus all the other favourites. The new song is "Rainbow in the Storm". We notice classic Lee fingerprints, with plenty of space for the imagined orchestration. He just doesn't seem the sort of man who would tolerate a song in his repertoire if it wasn't at least as good as the perfect things he has already written. At this rate it could be a while before we get the full new album.
"Bummer in the Summer" gets an extended treatment, with some fine and subtle blues harmonica from Arthur and very cool slide guitar from Mike Randall. Every other song in the long set gets a freshed-up treatment that stays completely true to the spirit of the original while using the power and fluency of modern playing. Old Man, Red Telephone, Alone Again Or, Live and Let Live ... but not (is memory playing tricks here?) Laughing Stock.
The crowd is a flaky mixture of young band members making mental notes and old gits getting flashbacks "We Love you Arthur!" is shouted more than a few times, and there are women hanging out of the stage-side boxes to touch his hands (Muppet Show audience style) as he leaves the stage before the encore of Clark and Hillsdale. By the end everyone has given up the comfy red plush seats and is roaring for more.
Chris Helme was booked to open the show as a solo act (the full Yards band have done most of the larger venues). As he came on he seemed to share the audience's apprehension at what could easily become a fool's errand. The expected empty seats were all full - the bar had emptied and everyone was packed in - impatient for Love. I gritted my teeth at he first chord - Chris's fine Gibson guitar was slightly out of tune, and that was not something Arthur Lee (or his audience) would appreciate.
But Chris is a modest man and musical with it. He had the bottle to stop, retune and start again with rueful smile, and things went up from there on. His self deprecating confidence, his subtle guitar playing and great voice won over close attention and warm applause that grew throughout the set. Stand out songs were Fireflies and Moonbeams. Touches of Buckley vocal magic and good old fashioned proper acoustic guitar flowed throughout and we had a close-up look at what a good songwriter Chris has become.
