Music review: Madness, Hydro, Glasgow

Against the odds, the songs from Madness’s chart-topping new album fell somewhat flat in the unforgiving expanse of the Hydro, writes Fiona Shepherd

Madness, Hydro, Glasgow ***

Madness’s new album Theatre Of The Absurd – a chart-topper, frontman Suggs announced with some pride and perhaps a little surprise – is delivered with a dramatic flourish, with voiceover from Martin Freeman (star of the BBC’s Sherlock and The Hobbit films, among other roles) and a thread of contemporary malaise running through it. It should be tailormade for performance.

Yet somehow the unforgiving expanse of the Hydro was not friendly to this album’s ambiguous emotion, downbeat moods and nuanced arrangements. In short, your honour, the new songs fell rather flat – and all this despite acting royalty Helen Mirren and Michael Gambon appearing on the venue’s big screens to add to the drama.

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Arguably, on the first Friday in December, in the largest arena in Glasgow, Madness fans wanted an early Christmas party rather than the twilight zone being proffered.

However, the band are (rightly) proud of their latest creation and much of the first half of the set was peppered with the credible likes of Run For Your Life, a hectic, fidgety spy theme affair embellished with the soul blast of a brass section, and In My Street, which is something of a glimpse at Our House 40 years on.

Inevitably, the audience wanted to bop along to the original celebration of chaotic but contented domesticity, but there were other old favourites peppered throughout the set before they got to the final salvo of big hitters.

This included their 1979 debut single The Prince; the pounding momentum, top tuneage and socio-political lyrics of Embarrassment, and the doomy dancehall sway and Latin coda of Grey Day – this latter being introduced by Suggs with the caveat that “80 per cent of the songs we write are about petty criminality”.

Finally, the energy injection came with an unbeatable run of gleeful early Eighties pop classics, kicking off with the irresistible skank of One Step Beyond and culminating with the demented knees-up that is Night Boat To Cairo, after taking in a cover of The Specials’ Friday Night, Saturday Morning in tribute to the late Terry Hall.