Sydney hip-hop group Bliss ‘n’ eso open for a small but appreciative crowd. Almost half a decade into their career and after several high-profile support slots (The Roots, DJ Shadow, Black Eyed Peas) they’re tight and energetic. At their best, they recall Licensed To Ill era Beastie Boys with their frat-boy rhymes and shout along choruses. With one Australian-born MC, another from the States and a DJ with Moroccan heritage, one might expect some kind of interesting cross-cultural forces to be at work here. But that’s not really the case. Either that or booze, bongs and beats are just universal. Beer in particular seemed to be a recurring theme, whether drinking it, giving it out to the crowd, or celebrating it in Beer o’clock, which got the crowd jumping.
After a relatively lazy performance at the Big Day Out days earlier, The Streets are in relaxed top form tonight. From the time Mike Skinner comes on to stage, or maybe a couple of moments earlier, when he’s delivering the opening lines from backstage, it’s clear this show is going to realise the potential of one of 2004’s best records, A Grand Don’t Come For Free. Skinner is greeted as the most unlikely of messianic figures; the front row strain to touch his polo shirt and jeans, the ordinariness of his persona that makes him so unique.
This is music worth getting excited about, fresh and original. Because, as Skinner tells us in Let’s Push Things Forward, this ain’t yer archetypal street sound, he writes bangers not anthems. The best of these bangers include an epic version of Weak Become Heroes, a beautifully reflective Could Well Be In and Has It Come To This?, on which Skinner orchestrates the crowd to add the “oh, oh, oh”. But he’s not quite happy…”What day is this ?” he asks. “Saturday ? Saturday night !? This looks like a Wednesday crowd !”
Elsewhere, he’s pouring brandy into the mouths of front-row punters as a drum roll plays, stumbling over and throwing his towel into the crowd before admitting “I took that from the hotel.” While the bandleader gets the lion’s share of media attention, the muscle-bound Neo is almost as important in the live context; rapping forcefully, singing soundly and acting as a straight man to Skinner’s clown, keeping the songs going while Skinner playfully goads the crowd (“It still feels like a Wednesday audience”) and gets everyone to wave their lighted mobiles and flash their cameras as the lights are turned go out.
The trick with the lights is an inspired moment, a touch of old-style showmanship.
It’s also a reminder that there is something old-fashioned at the heart of what makes The Streets great. For all the talk of the innovative nature of the rhymes and the garage beats, Mike Skinner’s art is proof of the virtue of that age-old adage : write what you know. And what he knows is life as a Birmingham geezer: tales of breakups, drugs, trying to pick up at the local, wandering what it’s all about over breakfast in a no-frills corner cafe. These day-in-the-life vignettes from the e-generation are all evoked with an innate feel for storytelling and a vulnerability that’s a world way from the machismo and hedonistic confidence of much mainstream hip-hop.
He’s also got a short fiction writer’s eye for detail, an ability to find the seemingly banal details that somehow infuse a song with depth and realism. Who else writes about going outside a club so you can get reception bars on your phone ? Who else renders the nervous fumblings of a first meeting so well ? That said, he can also do the lagered-up singalong as well, as seen in the raucous closer, Fit But You Know It. It’s more an anthem than a banger perhaps, but one that sends this Saturday night crowd out on the best kind of high.
