For a man who spends a lot of his increasingly rare free time attending gigs and having lived in the fair city of Cardiff for nearly twenty years now, this is actually the first time I’ve been to The Gate. For those who have not had the experience, it’s a deconsecrated church in the back streets of Roath, so perfect for a takeaway on the way home afterwards if I wasn’t an old fart who has to watch his calorie intake nowadays.
As an increasingly arthritic old fart to boot, it’s also not the greatest of venues when it come to comfort. I don’t have an issue standing all night at gigs, but sitting on steely hard Victorian church pews that are clearly designed with no small amount of Presbyterian guilt and penitence in mind is no easy experience, and this is a long show.
That said, the evening flies by…
I am always aghast at quite how many albums the remarkably prolific Mr Townsend has actually created over the decades.
That said, the evening flies by…
I am always aghast at quite how many albums the remarkably prolific Mr Townsend has actually created over the decades.
All told 28 studio albums, 6 EP’s and ten live releases across his various projects (not to mention all the box sets, reissues and compilations needed to exit label contracts) is quite a formidable level of output crossing the genre boundaries every other album and probably only beaten by the late Prince, who had a 17 year head start before his death a decade ago (but may continue to surprise since no-one knows for sure how much unreleased material is still sitting there).
The purpose of tonight’s performance is to take us on a whirlwind tour of as many of them as possible, linking the range and variety of his music with the deeply personal journey that culminated in the quite sublime The Moth.
I know I’ve barely scratched the surface of his material, having only really listened to his releases from this decade, but the small but dedicated audience here tonight all seem to be familiar with the gamut he runs this evening.
I know I’ve barely scratched the surface of his material, having only really listened to his releases from this decade, but the small but dedicated audience here tonight all seem to be familiar with the gamut he runs this evening.
He’s done these evenings before, and I was curious as to why an artist that can easily pack good sized halls and headline festivals around the world would want to stand there on his own for 2 hours, given the costs involved in going on tour nowadays to play (sold out) venues of less than 500 people for months on end.
The answer is obvious after a couple of minutes – because he’s absolutely in his element, and his pained emotive delivery touches each and everyone here instantly, which is why the queue for merch during the interval is longer than the one for the loos…
What starts as a very low-key affair, becomes deeply emotional and personal from the get-go. It’s almost entirely an acoustic affair, and despite an array of six strings littering the stage, ninety per cent of the performance is delivered through one hard working acoustic guitar – even when he bashes out the power chords of the most angsty Strapping material.
What starts as a very low-key affair, becomes deeply emotional and personal from the get-go. It’s almost entirely an acoustic affair, and despite an array of six strings littering the stage, ninety per cent of the performance is delivered through one hard working acoustic guitar – even when he bashes out the power chords of the most angsty Strapping material.
The same happens vocally, and although the expectation is that he will stay within the clean tenor range that he’s easily capable of scaling, we get plenty of screams and growls as well and whoever is on the mixing desk clearly knows their stuff in this acoustically unfriendly environment, as the vocal switches and twists he throws out are perfectly presented for the ear of the listener.
Then there’s the banter. If you know Devin Townsend, you will be well aware that as well as being one of the most talented musicians currently walking the boards, he’s also a remarkably quick wit and would put many a professional stand-up comedian to shame.
Then there’s the banter. If you know Devin Townsend, you will be well aware that as well as being one of the most talented musicians currently walking the boards, he’s also a remarkably quick wit and would put many a professional stand-up comedian to shame.
Even when things go wrong technically, he manages to turn a five-minute hiatus courtesy of a laptop choosing precisely the wrong moment to present a blue screen of death into a segment that left everyone laughing so hard with him, that it really was just as well that it happened right before the interval.
When the tech did finally creak into life, it gave us an epic one-man rendition of Lightworker – a track that would have been a challenge to deliver live with a full band on a conventional tour, but he manages it solo with that acoustic effortlessly.
Having gone back and relistened to his live release from a previous one-man tour back in 2019, it’s clear that this is a more confident and seamlessly fluid performance tonight.
Having gone back and relistened to his live release from a previous one-man tour back in 2019, it’s clear that this is a more confident and seamlessly fluid performance tonight.
Dealing with pain and emotional discomfort on stage has oft been the artist’s way through, but to do so with such an intense and focussed theme rather than just running through the greatest hits takes guts, and we love him for it.
I have no idea what comes next musically, and this musical coda to the deeply emotive and autobiographical The Moth does feel like the end of an era. Whatever it is, I suspect it’s going to be absolutely brilliant, because everything else we touched up across the three decades of his output have been.
Full marks simply doesn’t feel quite adequate.. 10/10
Full marks simply doesn’t feel quite adequate.. 10/10
