I spent Thursday night at New Century Hall in Manchester with John Grant, courtesy of my friend Darren. John Grant's solo career goes back to 2010 and his Queen Of Denmark album which was followed in 2013 by Pale Green Ghosts. This year he has released another, The Art Of The Lie, his sixth. There's a lot going on with John Grant, on stage, in his background and personal life, and in his songs. Growing up in some fairly conservative parts of the USA, his growing realisation he was gay brought conflict with his parents (his mother told him as she was dying he was a disappointment and in his song Daddy he sings 'You don't like what I am/I have come to understand What I am is a sin') and he spent much of his adult life struggling with anxiety, alcohol and drug issues. In 2012 he announced he was HIV positive, something he wrote about in the song Ernest Borgnine.
The seriousness of some of his songs and the heavy duty nature of his life isn't necessarily reflected in his gigs. He takes the stage to Ennio Morricone in baseball cap, big sunglasses and carrying a keetar and launches into the mid- 80s MTV electro- funk of All That School For Nothing, a stream of consciousness single from earlier this year and after handing the keetar to a roadie sings the next two songs at the front of the stage with occasional slut drops. It's big and brash, a little camp, the three musicians around him on bass/ drums, synths and guitar creating a wall of sound. There's an 808 suspended from a rack, various vintage synths including a Korg that John points out to us as if its a band member.
He goes to the baby grand piano for a slower, more reflective set of songs including Daddy and the wonderful, with its lines ' I felt just like Sigourney Weaver/ When she had to kill all those aliens' and 'I felt just like Winona Ryder/ In that movie about vampires/ And she couldn't get that accent right/ And neither could that other guy'. He's a master at writing about big topics but coming in sideways, undercutting things with one liners and droll humour. After the piano section he starts wandering round the stage, switching on various bits of kit for the Vangelis- like majesty of Pale Green Ghosts and then the band re- appear and a very respectful audience get song after song from the current album and his back catalogue. It finishes, as all John Grant gigs probably should, with GMF...
Recorded in Iceland in 2013 after he moved there, with Sinead O'Connor on backing vocals, GMF is a loner/ outsider anthem, a dissection of his own anxieties and a song directed to a lover, 'I over analyse and over think things/ It's a nasty crutch', he sings- but the punch comes with the killer line, totally unexpected on first hearing it, 'But I am the greatest motherfucker you're ever gonna meet/ From the top of my head to the toes on my feet'.
That was a great read, Adam. Gutted though I am that he had to postpone his Bristol show due to illness, I’m glad that it didn’t impact greatly on the rest of the tour and you got to see him
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I deliberately avoided buying or listening to The Art Of The Lie as I wanted to hear the songs (or some of them at least) for the first time in a live setting. As the Bristol show’s rescheduled for Feb 2025, I’m going to have to break that self-imposed rule.
And GMF? Very few artists can make cussing sound beautiful and uplifting, JG is an expert and this might be his finest example of this.
Thanks for sharing!
A great review Adam. He played locally about a week ago. I ummed and ahhed about shelling out for a ticket for too long and the show was sold out by the time I'd concluded my dithering.
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