Coming into this year, Del
Amitri was one of only two of my all-time favorite
dozen acts that I had never seen live. (I hope to knock the other one off this
summer.) Given that they’re based across the pond, were never big stars in the States,
and hadn’t toured here in 25 years, it was a delightful surprise when I learned
earlier this year that they would be doing a U.S. tour. It was well worth the
wait.
Appropriately enough, for both the band and most members of
the audience, they started out with “When You Were Young”. A particularly
strong point of the show came just a couple of songs later, with a 1-2-3 punch
of “Always The Last To Know”, “Not Where It’s At”, and
“Kiss This Thing Goodbye” (the first thing I had ever heard by them). Their
four-song encore was one of the best I’ve ever experienced; Justin Currie held
everyone spellbound with his vocals on “Empty” and “I’m So Scared Of Dying”, and they closed with the will-he-or-won’t-he “Be
My Downfall”, one of my personal favorites.
Interestingly, a couple of the highlights of the show for me
were songs with which I was less familiar; in addition to “Empty”, they did a
great job about halfway through the 90-minute show with “Crashing Down”. Seven
of the 13 tracks from last year’s Fatal Mistakes album (their first
studio effort since 2002) made an appearance, complementing the older material
nicely. In addition to “I’m So Scared Of Dying”, I
particularly enjoyed keyboardist Andy Alston stepping out front with his
accordion for “Mockingbird, Copy Me Now”. The musicianship was stellar
throughout – I was especially impressed with Iain Harvie’s work on lead guitar,
which came across much more in person than on their records.
My only disappointment was with the arrangement of “Driving
With The Brakes On”. I at first thought that the clickety-clack
percussion was a prerecorded backing track, but a glance at Ashley Soan revealed that the wood-block tapping was completely
live. Either way, I found it distracting for such a great, slow, moody song.
Being about 10th in line – I arrived around 4:15 –
I got a forward-facing padded bench seat at table 316: dead center, parallel to the stage and just in front of the divider. The view was
quite good, and the sound was excellent. Currie’s vocals could be heard clearly
over the instruments, even on the louder numbers. While the show didn’t sell out,
at least 80% of the seats seemed to be occupied.
Kris Dollimore, one of the band’s guitarists, provided a
nice 30-minute acoustic opening set, with a pair of instrumentals (both of
which reminded me of Tom Rush’s “Rockport Sunday”) sandwiched around more
bluesy songs that also featured his singing, including a Mississippi John Hurt
cover and a spirited version of Marvin Gaye’s “Inner City Blues”.
