“Cheer up Steve!” shouted someone in the audience at Camden Roundhouse after a few slow songs. “I’m as happy as a mother*u#k~r” he replied using one of the most unfortunate similes I’ve heard in a while. How about “I’m more content than Oedipus”?
Setting aside Steve’s domestic arrangements – he is one of the crowning jewels of modern American music. He deflected the shouted requests for songs by reminding his audience just how many albums are in his back catalogue. He was too modest to mention it but his most recent, Washington Square Serenade, is up there with his strongest. It’s his homage to his newly adopted New York home and as you can see in the introduction to City of Immigrants his politics haven’t mellowed in the slightest. After a complaint that the Afghan and Iraq wars are not an issue in the US elections Steve observed that there is a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric instead and this song is his response to it.
There’s an odd discrepancy between many of Steve’s musical themes and his fanbase. It looked like a big chunk of Radio Two’s audience likes nothing better than hearing songs about alcoholic drifters randomly murdering people during a robbery. But his anti-war statements got big cheers and so did Jerusalem which obliquely makes a case for letting Palestinians have control over the city.
As you can hear from the video Steve has got himself a DJ though what you can’t see is that he looked like one of the bouncers. I’m unfamiliar with the exact terms but he added scratching, mixing and sampling – probably – and gave some tracks a type of Portishead vibe which generally worked well.
Four, maybe even five stars for this show. It surveyed the whole of Steve’s career and, apart from his DJ chum and a handful of songs for which his wife Allison Moorer accompanied him, it was a solo effort. Comparisons are always invidious but you couldn’t watch this performance and not feel that the heir to Johnny Cash was on stage.
Liam redux 
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