Jah Wobble and the Invaders of the Heart / Sudbury Quay Theatre 1.11.23
Driving down lanes in leafy Suffolk, through wild, stormy weather, brings you to the tiny Quay Theatre in Sudbury, a surprising setting in which to encounter a post-punk legend. Jah Wobble’s career continues to expand at a dizzying rate – Thames Symphony and The Bus Routes of South London are just two of this year’s CD releases, and a project with none other than Rick Wakeman has recently seen the light. Tonight, however, the road-hardened current Invaders of the Heart line-up of George King, Martin Chung and Marc Layton-Bennett, show they’re completely capable of also tackling the daunting foundation stones of his music, the first two Public Image albums, especially the hugely influential Metal Box.
Wobble also has a huge, sprawling back catalogue of music produced since he parted ways with that band and the first set plunges immediately into a ferocious ‘Becoming More Like God’, from his 1994 album, followed by the thunderous jazz of ‘7’ and the slow revisiting of ‘Public Image’, with Wobble on vocals. On the first, Marc Layton-Bennett puts his stamp on drum patterns originally laid down by Jaki Leibezeit, while guitarist Martin Chung has the unenviable task of recreating the late Keith Levene’s jangling riff on PiL’s calling-card.
Metal Box in Dub has recently seen Wobble create newer versions of songs originally mostly created by himself, Levene and John Lydon in the studio, and tonight Public Image-era tracks comprise nearly half the set list. These, however, are radical re-versions, not just recreations of the originals: ‘Socialist’, for example, is announced as a ‘drum and bass’ version, and the Invaders build forcefully on the original brief blueprint. Similarly, ‘Fodderstompf’, from the first PiL album, is despatched as a gleeful, pulsing closer to the first set.
The spacey ska/dub of ‘Liquidator’ reminds us of one of Wobble’s major influences, and his prowess on bass, despite a broken thumb, remains fluent and powerful, cutting through the walls of keyboard and guitar, anchoring everything through nifty turns and sudden pauses. In the second set, two selections from Rising above Bedlam, the 1991 release which re-established him, see George King dropping little keyboard runs in between the bass and Layton-Bennett’s astonishing drumming – ‘Visions of You’, complete with pre-recorded backing vocals, becomes a wall of riffing.
Two more important Metal Box-era songs follow: ‘Poptones’ again sees Chung building fearlessly on Levene’s original dissonant arpeggios, while ‘Careering’ becomes epically propulsive, despite the rather scrappy spoken/sung vocals. Onstage, structures which seemed claustrophobic studio creations come to life again, revealing just how melodic the Levene/Wobble partnership originally was. It seems a pity that ‘Swan Lake’ and ‘Graveyard’ were not also given an airing.
Throughout the evening, Wobble’s demented, larky MC patter leavens the intensity of the material and delights the audience, while the entire band regularly reveal their tight interplay and willingness to take risks. The second set roars to a close with the ‘How Much Are They’/’Invaders’ theme segue, taken at a dizzying pace, as on the 2017 Usual Suspects release. The final song is a cover of ‘Get Carter’, the theme to the 1971 Michael Caine film, introduced by dialogue from it: once again, the entire band push the song to its limits, King’s keyboard flourishes adding grace-notes as it concludes. The current Invaders line-up is a hugely powerful outfit – Wobble is rightly proud of them. A pity there was no room for anything from 2016’s Everything is No Thing, this line-up’s most consistent set of new jazz-skronk material, but you can’t have everything. By the time you read this, Wobble will have several more projects on the go, determined to keep moving.
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M.C. Caseley / 2.11.23