All hail Skin. If you take nothing else from this review let it be this; Skin is a force of nature. Ageless, deathless, furious. 30 years after Skunk Anansie’s heyday it seems Skin cannot, and will not, be stopped.
After dipping their toes into the piranha-infested waters of a comeback with a handful of stand-alone singles over the previous few years and an absolutely barn-storming Glastonbury set, SA have decided to dive in feet-first with a brand-new album and full-on Euro tour.
And goodness gracious do they go for it. Where some bands might be content to sit back on their haunches with a few new tracks and their big nostalgic hits over maybe an hour, Skunk Anansie mine their entire back catalogue, giving as much reverence to their middle period as to the big 90s singles, for damn-near two frenetic hours.
Coming flying out of the blocks with one of the afore-mentioned stand-alone singles, ‘This Means War’ sets the tone for the next two hours; aggressive, confrontational, and politically charged. Politics might not be what immediately springs to mind when thinking of Skunk Anansie (although ‘This Is Fucking Political’ might give you a hint), yet their oeuvre is full of angry, socially conscious numbers, as appropriate for the current bin-fires of today as at any point in the last three decades. ‘Little Baby Swastika’ is achingly relevant while Skin delivers an impassioned monologue about how right-wing institutions find ways to oppress vulnerable groups before launching into ‘God Loves Only You’.
Throughout all this Skin is a live-wire, commanding every inch of the stage with boundless energy and those frankly astonishing pipes. Skin’s vocal histrionics are legendary, and at the tender age of 57 (!!!) her voice shows no sign of aging, the high notes at the end of the performance delivered with as much power and clarity as those from the opening. Surely up there with Axl Rose and Chris Cornell in the Best Voices in Rock category. What is also very apparent is the amount of fun they are all having on stage. The band have been together a long time and clearly still love playing together, Skin manhandling guitarist Ace and bassist Cass as all three whip the crowd into a frenzy.
The Big Tunes, of course, go off like a bomb. During ‘Weak’, ‘Twisted’ (a personal favourite of this young thrill-seeker way back in the day) and the magnificent ‘Hedonism’ (easily one of the best singles of the ’90s) Skin barely needs to sing the lyrics herself, drowned out as she is by the cacophonous and surprisingly in-tune roar that fills the academy.
New tracks ‘Animal’ and ‘Cheers’ from upcoming album ‘The Painful Truth’ hint at a more industrial, Nine Inch Nails-inflected sound and go down well with the crowd, promising a new chapter for Skunk Anansie, as raw and relevant as ever. This means war, fuckers.
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