Crippled Black Phoenix LIVE!
April 27, 2010 at the Luminaire, London, UK.
by Alissa Ordabai
Staff Writer
Crippled Black Phoenix deliver value for money. You pay a tenner to see them in a small club, and by the end of the show start contemplating things only a 100-quid-an-hour shrink would ever make you think about. Not just stuff like “What am I doing with my life?” or “Where am I going?”, but constructive things. For example, “Should I really be hanging with people I came here with?”, or, “Do I want to spend the rest of my life writing live reviews for online mags?” Or, even better: “Do I want to write honest journalism for a small magazines or sell out to a corporate publication?”. I hope you are putting up with me here because, as the wise man said, humor can soften some of the hardest blows that life delivers.
The band, however, engages you on analytical level with such a soft touch and with such impeccable balance of good taste, detachment and respect for their audience (while at the same time delivering first-class entertainment) that you don’t think twice about letting all those thoughts into your head. After all, isn’t this what all music of value is supposed to do? Plus those feelings don’t descend on you because CBP dishearten you. If anything, they do exactly the opposite, making you suddenly want more from life. Which is a rare feeling usually stirred only by the boldest and most audacious of rock acts. Given that most of those bands are stadium-size A-listers, your appreciation of CBP suddenly gains an extra dimension.
But it’s not just the subject-matter of CBP’s songs – loss, solitude, and profound doubt in all things easy and secure. It’s rather a combination of three factors – the A-grade musicianship, the erudite lyrics, and the ability to create a world which is as authentic as it is idiosyncratic. Musically it’s all built on the foundation of haunting ostinato vamps, deep-voiced cello, eerie slide guitar and vocals which are all about inner courage in the face of suddenly finding yourself stripped of all inner comforts – subdued almost to the point of resignation, but still defiant, still alive, and for this reason resonating on all levels – cerebral as well as visceral. This is the kind of atmosphere where important questions stop sounding pretentious or out of place – the most real and authentic of all things you’ll hear in British rock in 2010.
Fresh out of the studio where the band had just finished recording their brand new record I Vigilante, Crippled Black Phoenix now find themselves in the middle of a European tour – an outing aimed to recruit more supporters for their gradual climb to international recognition. To all those who would like to get their head cleared (or, on the contrary – deeply loaded with profound stuff), or those who think they have it all sorted but would simply like to hear some elegant, timeless, genre-escaping tunes, this would be the best way to test yourself to see which of these categories you fall into. The crowd on April 27 at the Luminaire in Northwest London, while belonging in all three CBP fan types, had, however, one thing in common – they all left slowly, dragging their feet and unwilling for the evening to end – as if the music they’ve just heard was still somewhere near – palpable, alive and unwilling to let them go.