The Only Ones @ Academy 2, Sheffield

The Only Ones at O2 Academy Sheffield Review

0/5
Bands: The Only Ones
Venue: O2 Academy Sheffield
Gig: The Only Ones @ O2 Academy, Sheffield
Gig date: 25th January 2009
Posted on 1st February 2009 by johnbeyer

In their on and (mainly) off 33-year existence, the Only Ones have never paid much heed to career management, and the Sheffield leg of their current British tour showed — with characteristically erratic flair — that this is one old habit the band have not shed since re-forming in 2006. At the very point when a sensible set list would have cherry-picked their catalogue, for the good reason that it is available again on handsomely remastered CDs, the Only Ones chose to devote half of this show to new songs. The plan is to release a fourth album, a mere 29 years after their third, in a few months’ time. Allegedly. After making this surprise announcement on the back of the second number — a tune called Flowers Die, which proclaimed the new album to be as allergic to positive attitudes as its distant predecessors were — the group’s charismatic figurehead, Peter Perrett, drily observed: “Knowing how slowly this band moves, it’ll probably be out in about 10 years.” The irony is, time seems to be, at last, on their side. In the late 1970s, they were misfits, a band with no fixed generic abode: too musically proficient for punk, too romantic for glam, too melodic for metal and far too druggie for their own good. Now that anything goes on planet rock, the Only Ones are cult favourites. Perrett, a former junkie, is regularly cited as the prototype for the indie wastrel Pete Doherty. More creditably, he is also often named as the man who pre-empted Morrissey in the definition of rock miserabilism. Even popularity — not something the Only Ones noticeably courted in their heyday — has been sniffing around. In 2006, the closest the band ever came to a hit, Another Girl, Another Planet, enjoyed a vigorous second life as the soundtrack to a mobile-phone ad. It was the prospect of a new generation of fans discovering them that presumably inspired the band’s record company to line up new versions of their three albums. Only a group with the truculence and bravery of the Only Ones would have chosen to support this reissue with a tour that blanks much of their best-known — and, in fact, best — material. So, no From Here to Eternity, No Peace for the Wicked, Oh Lucinda or any of the lighter, poppier stuff bar Another Girl, which got a look-in as the encore. Elsewhere, the Sheffield show preferred slow, doom-laden epics such as Inbetweens and The Big Sleep, and the thunderous Bo Diddley tribute, Me and My Shadow. These were fine exemplars of John Perry’s filigree guitar work, but they made the band sound generally heavier than they should. The really good news was the remarkable condition of Perrett’s voice, an unforgettable, insinuating baritone that took a terrible beating during the years of heroin abuse, but now sounds as fresh as it did in 1977. The confidence that Perrett himself feels in his singing was reflected in the “unplugged” interlude, during which he performed It’s the Truth, Special View and a new one, Is This How Much, with only acoustic guitars as accompaniment. On first hearing, the newies sounded just about up to scratch, but under-rehearsed. Lyrically, there was a plainness to chorus lines such as “Now that we’re here, we might as well get on”, from Transfixed, that made you nostalgic for the sense of desperate yearning that once underpinned everything Perrett wrote. But hey, he’s still here, looking good, singing great and fronting a band who, even on an average night, are still a unique proposition, if not a national treasure. Robert Sandall

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