Jesse Malin immunises against wartime

Few miles to the west, and outside of the congestion zone otherwise known as the ‘Fortress Ken’, a collection of present, fading and has-been stars gathered for a concert voicing ‘One Big No’ but it appears that Noel Oasis is right for once: all these demonstrations, petitions and anti-war events are useless because our leaders know what is the best for us and thus have to ignore our gut-feeling or, God forbid, an opinion. At the Jesse Malin’s show there was no mention of the imminent aggression on Iraq…

Jesse Malin is clued in differently: his creative world is centred on life, emotional warfare between sexes, suffering and loss of dignity through love-dependency. Amidst tracks from his ‘The Fine Art Of Self-Destruction’, there were new songs such as ‘Arrested’: starting quietly and melodiously to quickly transform into this loud and angry monster. Tunes to bandage all lacerated tastes!

But, the first thing one notices about Malin is his stage presence: easy, friendly and communicative. He tells stories as if he were a stand-up comedian: joking, conversing with his audience as if knowing each individually and not shying away from commenting on fans’ demands for certain cuts. Very impressive at the time when no artists learn showmanship by paying dues (and thus disappear with the season’s vogue); this man’s been plying (and learning) his trade for a decade around the New York City…

Malin recalled, before performing ‘Queen Of The Underground’, his appearance at the Jay Leno’s chat show the week before when he shared a sofa with our Cymri-belle, Catherine Zeta Jones. The title track of the album kept things on the rockier side – with just a whiff of AltCountry – and he’d only slow down the beat during encores: ‘Solitaire’ was served acoustically with the four-piece backing band returning for ‘Cigarettes And Violence’.

Jesse Malin is a tunesmith of the anti-dire and belly-button fluff-picking variety: he’s a vital resident of the other side of rock-crowd’s songwriting where joy, humour and fun are to be had! You can sway, toe-tap and shake your hips quite often while quality music bombards your head and heart. He won’t change the world, which is not his intention anyway, but make it a more tolerable place to be miserable in.

The only thing I ain’t sure about is his haircut… But then, I’m not an expert due to an allergy… to the inane conversation subjected to in a barbershop.