Or to give it its proper name “Michael Rother and friends perform the top pop hits of Neu!”. Or something like that. There are lots of folk that care about these things would have been very unhappy had Rother been allowed to bill these gigs Neu! I can’t help thinking that if the rest of the band are dead you should be allowed to reform them on your own. Or, if commercial success has eluded you for so long – despite being one of those artists whose influence can be found just about everywhere today – you should be cut some slack in trying to get retirement package sorted out.
Welcomed like a god, we get an extended introduction to the eponymous reworking. There’s a few uneasy looks as the over digital set-up seems to have stripped any real warmth from the tune. Then Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley pounds in with the signature motorik beats and everything seems alright. For once, the notoriously muddy sound of the Picture House working to the band’s advantage.
And, that’s kinda how it goes on for the rest of the set. The often “my first mutli-fx pedal” guitar countermanded by just how driving and thumping it gets. It’s minor quibbles, because the peaks are just so high, and there’s more of them. At its best it’s a big groovy juggernaut with every hipster favourite caught in the headlights and shown no mercy.
Short set, one encore. Left us wanting more, I suppose. But, not necessarily in the way they intended.
[Part of The Edge festival]