Living on our rarefied little bit of the south coast, it’s often easy to take the sheer variety of live music available for granted. From black metal on the beach to experimental electronica rattling the rafters of the Dome, one thing Brightonians will never be stuck for is the opportunity to broaden their musical horizons.
With that in mind, one of the nicher acts it’s been our pleasure to see recently is the Duckworth Lewis Method – Neil Hannon’s ELO and cricket-obsessed five piece, who treated St George’s Kemp Town to an uproarious hour and a half earlier this month.
Drawing entirely on their first two records, they set the pastiche-heavy tone early with ‘Sticky Wickets’ – a glam stomper showcasing not only a keen musical ear but also their ability to work cricket into a metaphor for just about anything (in this case – unless I’m very wrong – sport as masturbation). This was followed by ‘The Age Of Revolution’ (in which 20/20 is used to represent the fall of the British Empire); the fiendishly clever, Orson Welles-referencing ‘Third Man’; and ‘Line And Length’ – an 80s influenced anomaly in which bits of cricketing lore are intoned over a lilting Scritti Pollitti chorus.
Alongside the music, which was fantastic if sometimes possibly a little under-rehearsed, the other thing that elevates a DLM gig is the fun they seem to be having on stage. Hannon and beardy co-conspirator Thomas Walsh are as much like an old married couple as they are a pair of front men, with much amusement being had by the former tutting at the latter’s swearing in (a) church. They also have as good a rapport with the audience as you could hope for, as evidenced by the mass singalong accompanying spin-bowling ode ‘Jiggery Pokery’.
The evening finished with ‘Mystery Man’, a ska-inflected rave-up during which a surprisingly sprightly crew of aging B-Town hipsters and cricket fans shook their thing at the front of the stage. This was followed by first album highlight ‘Test Match Special’, after which they were gone, leaving behind a only a scattering of inflatable palm trees to remind us that they were ever there at all.
An evening with the Duckworth Lewis Method – smart, funny and fun enough to make you believe that maybe all pop music really should be about cricket.
St George’s Church, Friday 20th September 2013
Words by Phil Mason
