Gig review: Lydia Lunch; Glasgow Classic Grand

By FIONA SHEPHERD
Published on 29/06/2012 02:18

As STATEMENTS of intent go, calling your latest band Big Sexy Noise is a bold one. But Lydia Lunch has been a consistently fearless commentator ever since making her name on the New York scene of the late ’70s and early ’80s.

Thirty years on, she still gets her kicks from making an infernal racket in small, sweaty clubs so, to that end, she has teamed up with the unholy trinity of James Johnston, Terry Edwards and Ian White, all members of mean old rock’n’rollers Gallon Drunk and sometime sidekicks of Nick Cave, to make what it says on the tin.

Edwards was missing in action for this show, so the performance. Nevertheless, the noise, as it turned out, was low-slung, distorted, grungey and definitely big, thanks to Johnston’s titanic guitar playing.

Lunch conducted herself with a winning combination of command and abandon. Punk Amazon that she is, she had no difficulty penetrating the fierce wall of sound with a ragged big cat yowl that would give Courtney Love sleepless nights.

Her rendition of The Gospel Singer was more demonic than devotional, while she vented her no-messing brand of gender politics by informing her waste-of-space boyfriend that Your Love Don’t Pay My Rent. The ball-crushing picnic continued in the encore with Lou Reed’s Kill Your Sons.

There was similar cantankerous support from Lunch’s post-punk peers Inca Babies, while openers Louise McVey and Cracks in the Concrete made some doom-laced though elegantly wrought pronouncements, not least with their creepy stalker version of Lionel Richie’s Hello.

Rating: ****