I’ve always said that Manchester is the only other city with a vibe similar to New Orleans. Well, on 27th February, the two cities met up on Oxford Road, a brave move on the part of NOLA with it being both a Friday and pay day in the city.
A motley crew of the middle aged and youth, all parka’d and Marr-haircut as is standard, gathered into the Academy 2 – easily mistaken for a school assembly hall but for 2 PA stacks and the smell of strawberry cider. The man we waited for is Benjamin Booker, a New Orleans-based bluesman enjoying some love from Rolling Stone, Jools Holland and Jack White. As the lights went down and the sound of muddy watered vinyl blues filled the air, I expected Booker to roll out, play some achingly cool retro sounding blues pastiches from behind a beautifully caressed guitar.
Wrong.
This is no ordinary bluesman. These are no ordinary songs. Benjamin Booker makes a noise that’s both familiar yet totally alienating at the same time. Let me try describe it…remember when Kings Of Leon were good? You know Soundgarden on Superunknown? And Peter Green’s soulful yet kooky phrasing? The mystique of Robert Johnson perhaps? Somewhere in between all of these things is where Booker is, I didn’t think it was possible either.
Backed by two obscenely talented Nashville players (I didn’t catch their names but there was a dreamy drummer and a bassist that looked like a young Tom Selleck), Booker turned the stage into a wall of sound that was almost cartoon like in it’s power. In the beginning, as an audience we looked on in slack jawed amazement, applauding more out of sheer surprise at what was happening on stage. By the end, the boozy Mancunian crowd were doing their finest dances, especially to tracks like ‘Chippewa’, whose musical punctuation is designed for a shimmy followed by a fist pump, perfect.
Single ‘Violent Shiver’ and ‘Have You Seen My Son’ were made for this Friday night crowd, full of youthful snarl and arrogance, played with full throttle. Tender moments were provided in the beautiful ‘Spoon Out My Eyeballs’ and the lullaby of ‘By The Evening’.
Musically he really was a wonderful player, fully in control of his instrument and wrecking ball-like sound. And seriously that backing band, the more I think about them the more I want to compare them to Redding and Mitchell, alas they’re only young, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. But the potential is there. The only thing the Booker really does need to work on is audience communication. He chatted a handful of times to us; the first to say that this was the largest crowd he’d played to, the second time he got pelted with beer (he did ask the audience for a beer, walked into that one really). But this lack of communication left me a little lost in the set and had me feeling rather disengaged by the end. This will come with time though.
For now Benjamin Booker’s rugged yet razor sharp, tension filled punk blues won over a crowd of tipsy Mancs and myself – and that’s really saying something. Go try it while he’s still raw.
Kate Tittley
@letitts
Kate Tittley
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