Four stars
Fair to say I wasn’t expecting the meat raffle. No, really, a genuine meat raffle. The punter in seat D3 went home with a chicken, some sausages, a Fray Bentos pie in a tin, a can of Spam (natch), a can of baked beans (not Heinz) and a multipack of Mars Bars. The winner of the vegan raffle, by contrast, had to settle for a bag of spuds and some mild abuse.
But then what was I expecting? I’m not sure. Because for someone who has sold millions of records as the frontman of Fine Young Cannibals, a band who, for a brief moment at the end of the 1980s, were probably the biggest in the world, Roland Gift has long been one of pop’s more elusive figures.
A few acting roles, a solo album at the start of the 2000s, the odd tour singing with Jools Holland and his Rhythm & Blues Orchestra, and a handful of eighties-themed festivals apart, Gift – named one of the 50 best looking people in the world by People Magazine in 1990 – has been mostly notable by his absence over the last three decades.
So, this tour celebrating 40 years of the band that made his name – the band formed in Birmingham 1984, had their first hits in 1985 and went global in 1989 – felt like a return to the fray.
Dressed in a white dashkiri and looking well at the age of 65 years and one day, Gift took to the stage to a blast of Also Sprach Zarathusta (if it’s good enough for Elvis …), before launching straight into the King’s classic Suspicious Minds, one of a couple of covers Fine Young Cannibals had hits with back in the day. It set up an evening of songs about drinking and heartbreak sung by one of the most distinctive voices of the 1980s.
In the last week other 1980s veterans Midge Ure and Thomas Dolby have also played Scottish dates. Of the three shows this was the least ambitious but also probably the most straightforwardly enjoyable.
An end-of-the pier, crowd-pleasing turn played by a well-drilled band (including jazz pianist Zoe Rahman who couldn’t stop grinning throughout). You were never too far away from a big hit. And the biggest one, She Drives Me Crazy, was played twice for good measure.
But there was more to this evening than a by-rote skim through old favourites. Tonight’s take on the Cannibals’ version of Pete Shelley’s Buzzcocks classic Ever Fallen in Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve) had a spot of Lee Perry-style echoing dub sprinkled over the top, whilst the first performance of She Drives Me Crazy was reimagined by Gift and guitarist Dave Randall as a torch song played by Billy Bragg.
The one thing that hadn’t been tinkered with was Gift’s voice. All quavering vibrato yearn and falsetto reach, it has lost none of its power. It was shown to best effect on a goosebumpy I’m Not the Man I Used to Be, perhaps the finest song in the FYC back catalogue, which started softly – just vocal and guitar – then built and built as the band and backing vocalists Julie Isaac and Debbie Longworth joined in. The result sounded like the gospel soul standard it deserves to be.
Gift himself is a curious stage presence. Undemonstrative for the most part, droll at times (though not all his humour hits), he doesn’t seem to require an audience to love him, but doesn’t mind it when it comes. Does he feel the need to perform at all? Possibly not, but he seemed to enjoy it from moment to moment.
The evening ended with an out-and-out poppy version of She Drives Me Crazy that wasn’t as affecting as his earlier version but worked better for singing along to. Gift probably has a more interesting, intimate show in him if he can be bothered, but as a nostalgic celebration of his glittering past this was suitably meaty.
