Outside The Grey’s tonight it looks like any normal evening down the pub, but inside one of the most underrated British songwriters of a generation is performing to a hand full of people. Its an astoundingly intimate show, so much so that a few members of the audience treat it as just another night down their regular, much to the visible irritation of some of the other punters, but overall the atmosphere is cosy and relaxed. Performing at what Martin Newell assures us is a kitchen table with a single bottle of hair spray on it; it’s the ideal setting to bring out the distinctly British eccentricity in Newell’s song writing.

 

Its just Newell and a guitar, but he’s a charismatic enough presence that your attention never strays far from him. Throughout the evening he interjects his set with extended anecdotes, humorous poems and cheeky one-liners, so it feels almost equal parts a stand-up show as it does a gig. He’s not one to prevent his opinions being known on certain topics either. Some of the targets of his acidic wit include Engelbert Humperdinck, men playing blues rock in pubs that dress like geography teachers, and people who’ve recently bought a house in France.

 

Usually seeing a performer whose reached Newell’s age can be a bit of a disappointment. Their singing voice will probably have dropped a semitone or two too low, and have more than the desired amount of gruffness. But Newell’s voice is as strong as ever, in fact close your eyes and its indistinguishable from how it sounded on those Cleaners from Venus records from the mid eighties. Nor has his song writing ability diminished. ‘Little French Blue’ from the most recent Cleaners from Venus album, when stripped to the bare bones of just chords and vocals, easily holds its own amongst the other expertly formulated songs on display.

 

He has a set list planned out, but he deviates from it constantly, even to play songs he can’t entirely remember, figuring out the chords changes as he goes along. Its not just the covers, some of his own songs prove a bit of a challenge, a track like ‘Christmas in Suburbia’ takes two or three false starts, as he re-familiarises himself with its complex chord structure.

 

In fact Newell proves himself a fan of inventive and unconventional chords, clearly a patron of the masterfully crafted song, with an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of classic pop music. Evident from the countless covers he plays, including the Paul McCartney penned Cilla Black song ‘It’s For You’ and Noel Harrison’s haunting ‘Windmills of your Mind’, both of which do much more than your typical three chords changes. He’s as much a fan as he is a practitioner of the art of the perfect pop song.

 

Some of the old The Cleaners from Venus music gets a look in as well. With all the instrumentation removed, it’s a chance to also appreciate Newell’s talent as a storyteller. ‘Drowning in Butterflies’ is a forlorn tale of working class plight under Thatcher in 80’s, where as the ‘Queen and Me’ is a tongue-in-cheek stab at the British monarchy.

 

‘The Greatest Living Englishman’ is how Martin Newell once described himself on record, and you know he probably isn’t all that far off.

Louis Ormesher

Photos: Tom Barlow Brown