Pop: Stomping all over Adidas man
Edwyn Collins The Pavilion, Brighton
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Your support makes all the difference."Thanks for coming," says Edwyn about three songs in. "I always like to see all my people right here, right now ... if you know what I mean."
Another subtle jibe at the Gallagher brothers' expense, then, and it's off with his Fifties biker jacket and into the loping breakbeats and chintzy flute of "The Magic Piper".
The De La Soul-ish groove sounds just as good as it did on my Walkman, strolling along the Palace Pier an hour earlier. The recorded Edwyn had an inky, swirling sea for a back-drop, and the live one has a well-drilled sextet and a huge banner bearing his name in luminous orange. Tasty.
The pick'n'mix aesthetic so dazzlingly employed on Edwyn's I'm Not Following You album gives tonight's set a real sense of movement, and the Pavilion's "school assembly hall" feel adds a sense of intimacy.
On "Running Away With Myself", a song which finds Collins taking a fond look over his shoulder at his wide-trousered youth, he magpies a few lines from Marc Bolan's "Soul of my Suit" and melds them to the pliant chord sequence of the outro. It is a nice touch, and one wholly in keeping with the song's sentiment.
As ever, Collins is at his most entertaining when he is being the anti- guitar hero's hero. If each orgasm is a little death, Edwyn snuffs it repeatedly during the whammy-bar excesses of his chart-trouncing mega- hit "A Girl Like You".
By now its every crotchet must grate on his psyche like a Chicken Tonight advert. Admirably however, he still gives it everything; cantering about the stage like the back-end of a pantomime horse and even leaping into the crowd at one point. Sterling stuff.
Given that by the time they reach 30 most West of Scotland males have consumed as much country music as they have Irn Bru, the near rewrite of "Everybody's Talkin'" that is "No One Waved Goodbye" must have been a cinch for Collins. Tonight his delicately weighted croon is beautifully complemented by Andy Hackett's rolling acoustic guitar riff, making it one of the evening's stand-outs.
It is the truly anthemic "Adidas World", though - in which Collins laments the label-fixated mentality of the sartorially brainwashed, which really sets the heather alight: "Adi Dassler have you heard the news?/Gonna stomp all over your three stripe shoes," Edwyn threatens, gesticulating like a fundamentalist preacher.
Mark Chapman got John Lennon. When leaving the house for his morning paper, Edwyn Collins should keep a look-out for psychotic-looking men in sports casuals.
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