Gig review: Gary Numan

THE ageing goth look is a tricky one to pull off with any grace but Gary Numan is about as convincing a 53-year-old in eyeliner as you could get, flailing around the stage like a rock frontman 30 years his junior, feeding off the electricity of the music – and who wouldn’t feel invincible backed by such a monumental synthquake?

Having paved the way for industrial electro rockers such as Nine Inch Nails and The Prodigy, Numan is now playing them at their own game, teaming the aloof Euro electronica of his early career with meaty fuzz rock guitars wielded by his band of young bucks, a recipe which appears to have retained its freshness, judging by some of the premiered tracks from Dead Son Rising, his first new album in five years.

The overall sound was overwrought but never degenerated into the chest-beating angst territory of Trent Reznor. Numan was having too much fun with the theatre of it all, pulling off hammy rock poses and intoning portentously about Really Heavy Stuff.

However, after an impressive start, the quality sagged and the energy dissipated with a succession of safe and samey rock-by-numbers and only a ravey reworking of I Die You Die clawed back the potency at the last gasp.

Rather than inject life into the set when it was badly needed, Numan saved up all the power numbers for the epic encore. Cars sounded massive and majestic with a new-found groove. The electro punk snarl of My Shadow In Vain, from the first Tubeway Army album, was grounded in a compelling new wave bassline, while the evergreen Are Friends Electric? was enhanced with doomy gothic piano interludes which contrasted dramatically with the apocalyptic synthesizer hookline. It was almost enough to erase the boredom of the earlier lull.