Hugh Cornwell walked through the crowd to the stage at The Tuning Fork. It was a good sign.
When on deck he tuned his guitar for three minutes, sans a guitar roadie. Cornwell was focusing on his music. In the moment, he seemed in a Zen state of solitude in public.
Always a risk taker, he had 6 rings on his fingers (3 a side).
It seemed like a John Cage approach to treating piano, adding obstacles to embellish to the natural fight of his battered telecaster.
He started with the song Coming Out of The Wilderness, from the 2022 album Moments of Madness.
Inspired by the redundancy of living in London during the Lockdowns, it’s a three-chord trick that straight away showed his strength as a rhythm guitar player. There is a nice vulnerability in his playing though, a rare touch that one finds in Lou Reed’s work.
Cornwell has mentioned in the past that he wasn’t pleased with the robotic drums on the last Stranglers albums. He naturally reacts against that direction in his music, with a swing in his playing. It’s a fine line to walk. A balance of loose and tight.
His new backing band is world class. They anchored all the songs performed, giving him the platform to deliver his instinctual voice in music.
The show was predominantly solo material, with Stranglers gems added. The Stranglers songs he chose were nicely eclectic.
Three songs in he played Skin Deep to great reception.
When he played Tramp, the audience started to bounce. From the under-rated album La Folie, it was an unsupported single after the success of Golden Brown. It captures all the inventive elements of the band.
Hugh has said that there was a dark aura hanging over The Stranglers, which may have been because of the tritonal and dissonant music choices he makes on Tramp and many of the songs performed at the Fork.
Like XTC, a good balance between pop and inventive art.
The Stranglers came at the apex of Punk bridging into New Wave. Everything was on the table, and The Stranglers drew from it, and from themselves.
Nine songs in Cornwell performed the sci fi single from 1980, Who Wants The World. A forerunner to the Meninblack album, it is a great example of Hugh’s lyrical gamut.
He was once labelled as the poet laureate of Punk. He took that well, and nicely laughed it off. A great lyricist would suffice. His lyrics can be very street, but his palette of themes and influence stretches back as far as Nostradamus, of whom he and John (Jean Jacques Burnell) were keenly interested in.
Nice N Sleazy also shows the influence of Reggae on him. It’s a slight piss take on Nice and Easy by Frank Sinatra (who’s legal team threatened The Stranglers because the song was a detrimental release to Frank).
Its words show the sometimes-random synchronicity of Cornwell’s writing. It’s partially about the band’s first trip across the Atlantic to the USA, and partly about the Hell’s Angels in Amsterdam.
It also seemed to attract strippers to the stage (though not at the Fork), the biggest number being at their Battersea Park gig in the summer of 1978.
Cornwell addressed the crowd a few songs in with thanks and sincere warmth. He mentioned that Auckland should be renamed Walkland because it’s a 5 star work out to get around. He compared it to San Francisco.
Questioning if there had been an earthquake he asked, what happened? Someone shouted Road Cones!!! That raised a smile.
As a three piece, Cornwell and band showed that in simple form The Stranglers songs can hold up. Off course fans of The Stranglers would love to see him perform again with John, but The Tuning Fork gig showed clearly that the songs would go over around the campfire. Maybe with a nicely battered acoustic guitar.
Hugh paid homage to Lou Reed later in the set with his solo song Mr. Leather. Along with other new songs such as When I Was a Young Man (from Moments Of Madness), the song shows Hugh’s distinctive style, and that he hasn’t lost his way as an artist. They also have the quality of songs that will stick after a first listen.
Every gig he does must have nightly challenges. He has it down though.
His guitar playing slaloms between often unergonomic punk chords (that slide around the guitar neck with great results) and angular jazz style riffs, that seem based more on shape, then the linearity of a scale.
Add to this ringing open strings, and sometimes dysrhythmic speak singing, it’s something to behold. Oh, and on top of that, he is constantly pumping the delay on his Boss pedal board with his foot.
He did a nice traditional bow at the end of the show with the band.
He likes a challenge. Keeps his art fresh.
I’m sure Hugh Cornwell has lots of great years of expression ahead.
John Kempt
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Lovely and accurate review. I saw him on 1-Aug-24 in Sydney and it was much as you describe. An amazing artist and talent.