Published in NME, 6th February 1982
The Stranglers | Gig Review | Hemel Hempstead Pavilion 1982 | AS A LIVE proposition, The Stranglers have eluded me until now. The exceptional crunch of this show made me wonder why.
Of course, the wizened old masters of a particularly surly outrage have cause to rap their performance into its strongest shape.
The improbable success of ‘Golden Brown’ has rekindled The Stranglers’ support to the extent of pushing them beyond grass roots loyalty onto playlists and pop shows like never before.
They are bluff enough to deal with it without breaking that sneering stride, maybe — The Stranglers camp is apparently a mix of morose surprise and a ‘knew it would happen’ shrug —but that it took a featherweight bauble like ‘Brown’ to do it is an irony that Hugh Cornwell, the most maligned of rock intellectuals, probably enjoys.
The Stranglers | Gig Review | Hemel Hempstead Pavilion 1982
All the same, it shouldn’t be forgotten what a strong grip the group already has on the paying audience. The critical groans accorded ‘Meninblack’ and ‘La Folie’ hardly reflect a calamitous decline in public interest, consult your poll selections for the evidence.
The Stranglers’ regimentalising of punk attributes and their weird crossover appeal — a bullyboy aggression diverted by a different sort of melodic strength in their songs, topped off with a mockingly baroque sense of atmosphere — have made their legions dogged in their faith.
In opening with a relentlessly powerful ‘Down In The Sewer’ they seemed to shake their ancient anthem until its bones rattled; and having settled a score with their ‘punk’ trappings they turned to their recent music with scarcely another backward glance.
The memory of the dour playing on ‘La Folie’ was buried by a conviction — it can hardly be termed ‘enthusiasm’ — that managed to connect all the way through. There wasn’t a single song without interest.
The Stranglers | Gig Review | Hemel Hempstead Pavilion 1982
Nothing makes The Stranglers very compelling to look at. They want to be hidden men now. They seldom speak. The dreary uniform black they wear reduced them to simple shapes, scrawny or rotund as applicable, further disguised by the elaborate tricksiness of the light show.
Greenfield is masked by his machines, themselves draped in black. The drummer is Jet Black. As this only serves to emphasise the punitive qualities of the sound, though, it’s almost exemplary.
With Burnel and Black a more cohesive team the rhythm is severely bound up, enough to allow Cornwell’s guitar to hatchet the basic chords to ribbons.
The keyboards have never been better used. Often restricted to a nebulous rumble they would abruptly squawk out in a gibbering electronic shower to resuscitate any song that seemed about to fold in on itself.
What saves the repertoire from becoming a mere wallop is its sheer intelligence — something that almost told against them. ‘Duchess’ and an utterly ferocious ‘Tank’ were obvious winners but the ‘La Folie’ canon is difficult and requiring of concentration by any audience.
That Cornwell (in superb voice throughout) worked through it with such a sullen determination seemed to invest it with uncompromised rewards for the taking.
It seethed with a shackled fury. Just a good night? I thought The Stranglers recaptured the excellence that made ‘Rattus Norvegicus’ (for all its hatefulness) so insistently playable; though darker, and even darker yet. What a strange group of pop stars. (Richard Cook)
Leave a Reply