I dislike Sunday evenings, they are monotonous, long and foreboding. In an attempt to break my cycle of Sunday’s being a day of Primark jogging bottoms (not for jogging) and endless cups of tea and digestive biscuits, I went and saw Jesse Malin. Let’s get this over with. Okay, an effort was made, the die hard fans with one hand in the air were there with their confused girlfriends, but something about Jesse was just a bit lacklustre and pre-meditated. There was nothing fresh about Malin’s performance, yes, he had the banter (on repeat) and he had the key ‘HELLO MANCHESTER!’ sentence down to a T but musically it was rather like a mild earache. Jesse Malin sounded like the Boss and Ryan Adams gone bad which all made sense when his latest album “Glitter in the Gutter” features them both heavily. Lyrically, after ‘Don’t Let Them take Me Down’, I wish somebody had taken me down, slapped me, and taken me back to my McVities biscuit tin and this song was one of the best. However, like all music journo’s I will concede- the rhythm+the bass+ the guitars= competence and this competence at what they were doing (especially the zinging guitar meowing) made the gig bearable. I just wish it went on to do something else instead of the predictable Americana rock it was destined for. Malin tried hard, but I got the impression it had all be done before (quelle surprise!) and in a vain attempt to make us feel all a bit special (in my case, in a bad way) he made us all sit down on the floor and sing “Death or Glory”. Thank you Jesse Malin, at best you brought some entertainment to my otherwise empty Sunday, at worst you ruined a Clash song for me, and this, I can never forgive you for.
Rating: 4/10
Author: Sarah Vale
