Gig review: Neneh Cherry, Glasgow

Neneh Cherry remains full of attitude and charisma. Picture: Getty Images

Neneh Cherry - SWG3, Glasgow

* * * *

Picking up her cool, eclectic electronica thread as if she had never been out of the limelight, she is currently touring her latest album Blank Project with her new favourite collaborators, the fraternal duo RocketNumberNine. On this muscular evidence, it was hard to disagree with her assessment of Ben and Tom Page as “two men making the sound of about six”.

Together they provided an industrial strength sound system but also sultry trip-hop interludes and cool, glacial Kraftwerk-influenced melodic synth lines allied to beefy beats, creating an impeccable backdrop for the main focus of the audience’s affections.

Unbelievably, Cherry is now a grandmother and rightly not in the slightest bit coy about it. The crowd whooped at her very presence and she responded, looking like the coolest cheerleader in her punky tartan oufit, with heaps of attitude and charisma. When she was feeling it, the crowd were feeling it. And fortunately, she was feeling it from the get-go, praising her hosts as “holders of good spirit and energy”.

Even the ultra lo-fi visuals had a certain punk charm, with unfamiliar song titles flashing up and across the screen. There were two necessary concessions to nostalgia, the hits Manchild and the mighty Buffalo Stance, reworked as a rolling rhythmic inundation which bore Cherry aloft like the rarely glimpsed goddess she is.

Seen on 30.01.15