John Grant – Jazz Cafe, London 08/06/10

Falling in love with a record happens but once or twice a year, sometimes even less often. There are those albums you really like – the ones that make your blood pump faster or wake you up in the morning when there’s sleep in your eyes or a sigh in your heart. And then there are those truly special records that soundtrack an entire summer or get you through moments of life-threatening anxiety and terror, music that somehow becomes a part of your life, grafted onto your consciousness and memory like some weird extra limb.

I fell in love so quickly with John Grant’s Queen of Denmark that I thought it might be some cruel trick of audio magic. Just a single play and it felt like a missing tectonic plate on my musical earth had suddenly drifted into view, a lost continent filled with mystery, substance and instant reward.

The first heady week of this relationship saw me totter into my day job day after day with a loved-up grin on my face, sighing to lyrics like “I wanted to change the world/But I couldn’t even change my underwear” and “I casually mentioned that I pissed in your coffee”. Such is life.

To preface this review with such hyperbole and plaudits will give an idea of my state of mind and expectation prior to John Grant’s first headlining show in the capital. Under most circumstances, fulfilling expectations like this would be a herculean task but somehow John Grant pulls it off, giving me one of the best live music experiences I’ve had this century.

Grant is that rare thing – as excellent a songwriter as he is a performer. Taking to the stage with a four piece band, he runs through a trim set that succeeds in blowing the collective minds of the audience. Indeed, at one point I glance around to see grown men blink tears away. It’s that powerful.

Grant’s talent is to take the traditions and constructions of popular song writing and meld them to his own experiences which are by turns filled with bitterness, regret, joy and glory. The effect is an authentic progression on the American songbook. More than once tonight he alludes to the optimism present in all of his songs – which on the surface are angry tales of a harsh upbringing and numerous bad relationships. Among such an acquiescent audience, Grant appears entirely comfortable embracing the confessional aspects of both his songs and personality.

He has admitted that the ability to express himself honestly wasn’t something he felt comfortable about during his decade with The Czars. A couple of Czars numbers are rolled out tonight, including the stunning ‘Drug’ from the 2001 record The Ugly People Vs. the Beautiful People. On songs like this his vocal is an effortless weapon – it hits the rises and falls with grace, ease and sustained power.

‘Silver Platter Club’ and ‘Chicken Bones’ see Grant channel Randy Newman while his piano work recalls the more appealing areas of Elton John’s early seventies output – I’m thinking mainly of ‘Honky Chateau’ and ‘Madman Across the Water’.

The two touchstones of tonight’s set are arguably the most personal songs of the night, ‘Queen of Denmark’ and ‘JC Hates Faggots’, both of which are prefaced with some biography, giving colour to the themes and lyrics of Grant’s music. Talking before ‘Queen of Denmark’, he recalls a trip to see his mother in hospital following a hysterectomy and his father noting that a particularly ugly cactus in the waiting room looks like ‘what they just took out of your mother’.

A truly deserved call for an encore follows his exit, with Grant visably disarmed and overwhelmed by this turn of events. He returns to stage and somehow ambles through through the undulating ballad ‘Caramel’. “My love is the rarest jewel/and he crowns me with his love”, he sings, almost forgetting the words but buoyed along by encouragement from the crowd.

We are behind him all the way, touched at witnessing a performance laced with talent and humility.