Music / anson rooms
Review: The Pop Group, Anson Rooms
In the pub before we had been taking bets on the crowd and the consensus was: 150 blokes, aged 50-plus, wearing black. That was pretty spot on for Talisman’s support slot, all dutifully head-nodding at the back of the room.
Back in the day there might have been a bit of skanking but after 35 years the appreciation mostly came at the end of the tunes.
Those years hadn’t dimmed Talisman’s energy, though, and Dehvan’s vocals still had their crisp freshness while Dennison’s spider limbs and precision playing made him the definition of cool.
is needed now More than ever
Nothing Change they sang and it seemed to be true, especially when the mighty figure of Mark Stewart led the Pop Group onto the Anson Rooms stage.
Sure he’s filled out a bit and there’s a beard but that commanding presence was instantly familiar, prowling restlessly from the off, a demagogue assured of his own authority.
The room had filled, too, and not just with more old blokes and the VIP room had disgorged a cavalcade of faces from Bristol’s 80s scene and a party was underway.
The music was still awesome, strange and familiar, mostly taken from We Are Time, the title track a splendid scattershot of bits and pieces strung together and dubbed out over resurgent bass-lines, while Genius or Lunatic? jangled almost melodically.
The almost too-clean sound revealed echoes of its age, those chords almost New Romantic, but Stewart’s delivery had retained the effortless edge that always made him so compelling on stage (and posed that very question).
This was not an old band going through the motions for their pensions – this was music that still needed to be played and still had the power to amaze.
By the time they finished with – what else? – We Are All Prostitutes the Pop Group had done that rare thing: presented an audience with their happy memories intact and justified. Genius indeed – albeit of the lunatic kind.
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