Bittersweet comfort: John Grant at the Lemon Grove, Exeter University

Matthew Vizard
Authored by Matthew Vizard
Posted Thursday, October 24, 2013 - 10:33am

John Grant, Exeter University Lemon Grove, Wednesday 16 October 2013

Before you read this, do yourself a favour and have a listen to Queen Of Denmark, the 2010 debut solo album by former Czars frontman John Grant. If you don't already know it, it is an awed and heartbroken classic; a frank dissection of its author's troubled life and loves as well as a proud declaration of his homosexuality: sad, touching, funny and nostalgic, it is one of the finest records of recent years: a bold lyrical honesty couched in honeyed melodies.

Recorded with the Texan folk-rock band Midlake, the LP saw Grant emerge from the period of depression and struggles with drink and drugs which had accompanied the pre and post-Czars break-up. He quit music entirely for a period, but returned solo, emboldened and flush with musical ideas - and how glad those of us watching the big man at the Lemon Grove on Wednesday 16 October, were for that.

Currently touring Queen Of Denmark's taught, confessional, electro-pop indebted follow-up, this year's Pale Green Ghosts; Grant's performance at Exeter University's Lemon Grove held the audience rapt.

I'd first seen Grant at Exeter Phoenix (though he'd previously supported Midlake at the 'Lemmy') touring Queen Of Denmark,  where he played a stunning and intimate set. 

Produced by Birgir Þórarinsson of Iceland's electronica experimentalists GusGus, Pale Green Ghosts is a painful post-break-up record; excoriating in its detail, black humour and grief. It deals with the break-up of Grant's relationship and his discovery that he is HIV positive: dark themes, and yet, much like its predecessor, it offers a catharsis - a route map to recovery and hope. Stripped of some the warmer soft-rock tones of the Midlake-assisted debut, it is a more challenging but ultimately no less rewarding listen.

Played live, the album's soul bearing is tempered by Grant's warmly engaging personality and while Grant pulls no punches lyrically, there is comfort in the company of friends tonight; both among his five band colleagues and an audience that is rooting for him while hanging on every note and word.

Happily Exeter's intimate venues remain on Grant's tour schedule despite his growing reputation and sales, and we discover why, perhaps, as he declares his love for Devon. John is not only an American who has been living and working in Iceland (the glacier-like feel of Pale Green Ghosts seems to be dressed in that near-mythical landscape), and a serious anglophile but a Devonianite too.

He'll be taking his sister to stay in Branscombe "to walk on the cliffs and just be in awe" following a further week of gigs, he tells the audience. To cheers and applause he declares his love for our county, not in that "hello Houston, we love you" way that pop stars gliby trot out, but genuinely, warmly so. "It's so beautiful here," he tells me after the show as he smiles and shakes my hand - indeed "why would you want to live anywhere else?" we agree.

On the way home, my companions and I briefly riff, half-jokingly, on making a trip to Branscombe to see if we can catch the man in the local pub where, in our fantasy, he might be cajoled into striking up the old out-of-tune bar piano over a few frothing pints of local ale and regale us with stories and song; but we quickly decide this would probably constitute stalking and decide to leave him to enjoy the local beauty spots untroubled by forty-something fans.

Grant's pitch-perfect baritone is certainly a thing of beauty and a powerful instrument as he switches between centre stage mike and synthesizer. Pale Green Ghosts' extraordinary title track thumps out a pulsating synth beat, sounding almost techno-disco tonight as the bass notes rather thrillingly reverberate a couple of hundred sets of internal organs. The similarly early eighties (in a good way) beats and squelches of Black Belt follows, before Grant returns to the more somberly paced tunes from the new record.

The gloriously profane, self-deprecating GMF soars tonight, as does the magnificent album highlight It Doesn't Matter To Him, while I Hate This Town recalls Grant's unexpected encounter with the ex-lover in a homecoming visit to Denver.

If some of Grant's songs purvey a sense of anger at smalltown, small-minded America as well as an exasperation at the wreckage of human relationships, Marz is the flipside of Grant's darkness: A nostalgic fantasy inspired by an ice-cream/soda store of his youth where "your sweet sixteen is waiting for you after the show" , it aches for the innocence of pre-adulthood to a jaw-droppingly beautiful melody.  "You'll meet your heart's desire, I'll meet you under the lights," he sings and you are back in the class of 1987.

Pulling no punches where injustice is concerned, Grant dedicates the epic Glacier to "the ex-Soviet Union" in a sharp rebuke of President Putin's anti-gay agenda. 

The encore delivers a final emotional flourish: Sigourney Weaver is one of the wittiest song conceits in recent memory and yet another sweetly melodic confection; TC & Honeybear addresses better times with the same former lover who becomes the subject of much of Grant's rage on Pale Green Ghosts and so now sounds like a bittersweet farewell; and the closing Caramel is simply as heartbreakingly lovely a melody as you will hear.

Only our Britishness stems a collective swoon, but there are damp eyes under the lights tonight.

"His smile's an elixir, which heals the wounds of my darkest years," he sings.

"His laughter destroys my doubts and lifts me up so high/
His voice it is soothing like a warm breeze on a summer night/
When he envelops me, I give myself to him, and my soul takes flight."

Wow...it is Grant's ex's loss you reflect as you walk out into the warm night air after a very special gig.

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