Monday 17/05/04 Jesse Malin, White Light Motorcade @ Academy 2, Liverpool

Anyone who has seen Jesse Malin live will surely recognise his almost religious determination to do things the old fashioned way.  He truly deserves his rock and roll missionary status – not for creating great videos – nor appearing in all the right gossip columns.  Alright, he got a break coming over to tour with Ryan Adams, but in the eighteen months that have followed he hasn’t rested on his laurels.  Can this really be the fifth time he has played Liverpool?  Is he becoming the hardest working man in showbiz?  Let us see…

As usual, Jesse has brought his friends along as support. This time we get White Light Motorcade – a NY four piece who effortlessly fuse MC5, The Ramones and The Who to produce what, Garage Britpop?  Brim full of enthusiasm, the only snag could turn out to be their diversity – will their potential audience of BRMC/Jet fans be able to stick the anthemic college rock of 'All Gone Again'?  For tonight however, they are the perfect warm up – loud and proud with just the right swagger.

Tonight Jesse appears with a four piece band, and the experience is somewhat different to his solo acoustic gigs.  His distinctive new wave folk strumming translates perfectly to the expanded line up, even if it is a little over the top at times.  With an ever expanding set of songs, the set is split fairly evenly between the familiar favourites from his debut album and new songs from forthcoming follow up 'The Heat'.  Sometimes the band arrangements work perfectly - long time live favourite 'Silver Manhattan' reaches almost Crazy Horse-like proportions tonight.  Although it does at time become a bit Jim Steinman-esque, masking Malin’s lyrics.

If anyone can do rock drama though, it’s Jesse Malin.  When he’s not singing he’s dangerously close to the front of the stage, either ferociously strumming his acoustic, or encouraging the crowd to clap along.  He knows that this is both “Bon Jovi bullshit” and a great guilty pleasure, and his still growing army of support lap it up.  His easy discourse with his audience has become his trademark; whether it’s one of his great tales of life on the road or his traditional encore full of covers (we get Springsteen, Fred Neil and Costello) there's always something that guarantees a special night in his company.

They say familiarity breeds contempt, but it can also bring appreciation.  This is far from Jesse’s best performance in Liverpool.  Hey, even the hardest working man in showbiz can have a bad day at the office.  When a bad day is this good however, you can’t help but smile inside and put in reservations for the next time he will inevitably be around.

Photos by Sakura Henderson