GIG REVIEWS

Justin Lewis Orchestra
@ The Leadmill, Sheffield
30th July 2001
www.vanguard-online.co.uk

 JARVIS Cocker's sex city is soporific in the apricot dusk of a sweltering Saturday. Crimson faces slump in clusters outside pubs and the cars slide past pedestrians in slow motion. Even the breeze is hot.

Inside the Leadmill, the crowd is being revived by the icy chill of air conditioning whirring like a fleet of Chinooks. Bottles of lager are flying from the fridges. Bodies decorate the perimeter seating.

And so it is a wistful rather than euphoric appreciation of Justin Lewis tonight, playing with his extraordinary orchestra back on home soil and mainly to the already converted.

Justin is getting in the summer spirit by sporting a pair of shades which intangibly make him look like a misguided Frank Black impersonator. He beams whilst behind him stand a gang of urban desperadoes with an armoury of instruments arrayed in a desultory glow. They look magnificent.

And when head honcho Justin opens his mouth, a room full of chests tighten. His vocals are dizzying in their range, cradling Kidding Yourself in swaddles of deft tendresse and working up a lather to suddenly release seizing crescendos on Five Parter.

These are two of only three songs to remain from the set that wowed audiences on the festival circuit last year on the back of Mark and Lard feted debut single Made Us, Make Us.

Since then, their label has folded and the collective's new work emits the smoky knowingness of fingers burnt, of one too many loves lost.

Beautiful North is a sequined paean to a fading relationship. "This one is about drugs," announces Justin before another introspective soliloquy smattered with jazzy breaks.

The Orchestra's work is comparable in scope to Radiohead, but they have harnessed an articulatory lucidity absent from Kid A and their themes are examined with such ethereal romanticism they are excluded from any charges of Yorke-esque miserablism.

The solos at a tangent from trumpeter Simon Nixon, the atmospherics of the cello and violin, the verve and dynamism of keyboardist Bennett Holland (rumoured to be working on Massive Attack's new project) and the misty coherence of nine instruments employed in the creation of epic street symphonies make Justin Lewis a thrilling live experience.

Their singular individualism is cemented when, once the orchestra have sidled offstage, the Leadmill morphs into its Saturday night indie club and swaying bodies shoulder barge to chart toppers. They sound like sledge hammers on guitar strings.

James Grieve