Adam Green & Binki Shapiro – Ruby Lounge, Manchester 14/04/13

This is the first time I’ve seen Adam Green play in quite a while. My experience of him as a live performer is limited to a solitary support slot for The Cribs, across town at the Apollo in 2009.

Back then, he didn’t really have any practical reason to be there – his newest record, at the time, was more than eighteen months old – but that certainly didn’t slow him down, as he delivered a performance that was equal parts thrilling and farcical; decked out in a specially-prepared, puntastic t-shirt that read ‘MAN CHEST HAIR’, it probably wouldn’t be remiss for me to suggest that he’d indulged in a little artificial stimulation beforehand.

Tonight, though, he has got a record to promote; a full-length, self-titled collaboration with Californian singer-songwriter and Little Joy frontwoman Binki Shapiro. It’s seems very obvious – and it’s definitely very tempting – to draw immediate comparisons with Green’s tenure as one-half of The Moldy Peaches, but anyone familiar with his solo work, and live presence in support of it, will know that hooking up with Shapiro really represents the first time since his Peaches days that he’s slowed things down a little; the opening slew of tracks tonight, all drawn from January’s joint effort, see him on more subdued form.

On ‘If You Want Me To’ and ‘Casanova’, Shapiro takes the lead; her vocals, honeyed but not saccharine, are drenched in 60s charm, but when they aren’t delivered in tandem with Green’s low drawl – as they are, to impressive effect, on ‘Pleasantries’ and ‘Pity Love’ – they can feel a little flat.

“We’ve had a really weird day. A guy stole a load of gear from our van. We got a picture, but all we know is that he was wearing grey pants.” It’s interesting that this information is relayed to the crowd just before the evening’s midsection, which is largely dominated by Green’s solo material; whatever the grey-trousered culprit managed to make away with – “we just went out for dinner, and every time I saw someone in grey pants, I thought “fuck you!” – he couldn’t have taken Green’s electrifying stage presence out of the equation. “I’m gonna take the mic off the stand here, in classic lead singer fashion,” and he’s a different proposition once he’s done so; an enthrallingly awkward dancer, Green brings a real vitality to choice cuts from his back catalogue, including ‘You Blacken My Stay’ and ‘Friends of Mine’.

Shapiro prefaces her one genuinely ‘solo’ moment, a cover of Little Joy’s ‘Unattainable’, by gushing about how entertaining it’s been to watch her bandmate perform every night, and it’s difficult to shake the sense that The Adam Green Show has been tonight’s key component. It’s clearly a difficult decision to have to make – the collaborative LP is a perfectly charming pop record, but it’d seem a shame to play only that, with Green restrained throughout, and be on and off within forty-five minutes. The audience certainly get more bang for their buck with the inclusion of the likes of ‘Dance with Me’, from Green’s 2002 debut Garfield, during which he completes an impressively swift crowd-surf lap of the venue, but his antics put Shapiro in the shade.

It’s kind of a shame; ‘What’s the Reward’ recovers well from an intro that sounds uncomfortably close to Snow Patrol’s ‘Chasing Cars’, and ‘Nighttime Stopped Bleeding’ provides a suitably dramatic closer, but to ask Green to dial down his energy would only serve to seriously mitigate the sense of excitement at his live shows; he’s unquestionably tonight’s real star.