Once Around The Block

San Francisco

Last night was a great show, one of the best gigs I've seen. The first big reason was the venue itself. The Fillmore has a great intimate atmosphere considering the capacity is more than 1,100. Standing in the crowd eating your traditional free apple (a Mackintosh red too, lovely) you could almost be at the tiny Bush Hall back in London.

The support was Ray Lamontagne. I notice from looking him up that he's recently had a string of fawning reviews in the British music press. Admittedly, I could probably release an album of burping mixed with white noise and get a string of fawning reviews in the British music press, but in this case the hype is justified. If he sounds like anyone I suppose it's a gravel-voiced version of Ryan Adams, and Ethan Johns who produced Ryan's best stuff does the same for this guy and played drums during the set. The crowd gave him a tremendous ovation after every song and the applause at the end of his half-hour was so great he came back and did another. It's the first time I've ever seen a support act get an encore, I think it's safe to say we're seeing the arrival of a major new star. We'll all have his album in six months.

During the afternoon before the gig I went to Amoeba Records and shamelessly abused their hospitality by listening to Badly Drawn Boy's new album in full. It was just as well I did as the first part of his set consisted of playing it through in sequence. Like the record, this meant there were a few great songs near the start and it tailed off a bit towards the end. Best bit was "This Is That New Song" which he dedicated to Elliott Smith by saying he thinks "foul play" was to blame for the singer's fatal stabbing, a suggestion that got a big cheer from the crowd.

After a short break he did one and a half hours of the hits. Or at least the well known songs from earlier albums, "hits" probably not being the right word. Having a cellist and violinist in the band really filled out the sound and the opening of the second set with "The Shining" followed by "A Minor Incident" was probably the highlight of the evening with both songs played beautifully. The whole band was looking pretty relaxed and his decision to make the second half "like Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder revue, only without Bob, or any of those other guys" led to a bunch of songs played after requests from the crowd, including a keyboard-based "You Were Right" with Joe Strummer added to the list of dead singers.

Badly Drawn Boy used to have a reputation as a woefully inconsistent live performer, but last night the show was tight to the very last. After nearly three hours the lights finally came on and everybody had to go, which was a shame because I think everybody could quite happily have stood through another three hours. My legs are killing me today though.