Tuesday 21/03/06 Graham Coxon, Duels @ Carling Academy, Liverpool

The stripy shirts and second hand blazers were out in storm tonight as the king of Geek Chic would grace Liverpool with his presence for a sold out show full of middle aged Blur fans and trying-to-look-disinterested scenesters. Oh how the night eventually reeked of apathy as everybody’s favourite nervous rock star played to a crowd that were there for their love of all things underground and for his sheer lack of enthusiasm that came to a head tonight. If it wasn’t for support band Duels – those punters that eventually walked out half way through the gig would have surely asked for their money back as the band’s Pulp/Longview synth guitar pop epics were the stuff of nineties legend. Although a few years too late this band had the chops to pull off something great, yet with a fairly unresponsive crowd they did their best and left the stage in full knowledge that they would go on to bigger things. As Gigwise has been saying for a long time - a promising band with some very decent tunes.

It was then time for the main event, and after stepping out into a barrage of requests and the cliché confessions of love Graham Coxon would give a melancholic greeting to his eager fans, all the while sniffing like a bloodhound, overdosing on red bull and talking in tongues. Tonight was definitely going to be weird. Bursting straight into ‘I Can’t Look At Your Skin’ from his current album - It was good to see that the new tracks would translate better live with an arsenal of amplifiers behind him as the power was there and it hit you in the face like a face-hitting-mallet. As Coxon rocked out hard to renditions of ‘Don’t Let Your Man Know’, ‘Gimme Some Love’ and the cool ‘Bittersweet Bundle Of Misery’, the man seemed to pump out the hits fairly quickly as ‘Spectacular’ and ‘Freakin Out’ were pulled out the bag relatively soon. Too soon it seemed.

As talented as the man is it became apparent very soon that he is quite blatantly a singles artist, as the big crowd pleasers will be remembered for the rest of his days, yet the lesser known ones will no doubt remain that way, as tracks like ‘Just A State Of Mind’ and ‘You & I’ brought the gig almost to a grinding halt to which it just did not seem to recover. Exhausting his best too early was probably not the best idea as after a while that face-hitting-mallet turned into a dull nagging prod, as over bluesy drawn out renditions of past songs were definitely not getting the crowd going and as a few frustrated fans walked away, Coxon just could not recover. It probably didn’t help the stage show by stating that he didn’t want to play anymore, as he, like his fans, were definitely not feeling the vibe tonight. It was only due to new single ‘Standing On My Own Again’ and the brilliant ‘I Don’t Wanna Go Out’ that the gig picked up a little, but it would seem that not even these great tracks would save this mainly lethargic gig.