I'd been waiting since something like 1995 for this. Somehow I just discovered just how wonderful Mazzy Star were at the exact moment that they disbanded, and then, although I loved the solo Hope stuff to bits, it was at a time in my life that gigs didn't really feature that much. They then went out of view and I realised like a forlorn dog just what I had missed. Or that's what it felt like anyway. Like loads of people, or a few like souls at least, I spent the intervening years occasionally scanning the internet for any sign or rumour that Hope was going to re-emerge. Of course she, and the Warm Inventions, eventually did, last year, and again I was a bit tardy. I almost had my hands on tickets to a South Bank show, but they were behind a pillar - 'restricted view' and idiotically I said no to the nice lady on the phone. Realising what I'd done, I then bought two tickets to see them in Dublin, and at the last minute we just couldn't go. Obsession? Unrequited fan-dom I think. Which is why I was outside Bush Hall an hour and a half before the show. On the way I was starving and stopped for chips, but they had to put more in the fryer, it'd take 2 minutes. No! I had to get there. All worth while, and nicely timed to be sixth in the queue, march snappily in and plonk myself stage centre leaning on the monitor wedges. It's an august setting, faded chandeliers, glowing tapestries, and suited it all just nice. The support were incarnations of the main band, their proficiency on slide and pedal making it all feel a bit like Floyd in '74, when Gilmour had credibility. People sat on the floor, I've never seen so many grown up Gurniad readers cross legged at once.
I could hardly believe that the legendarily reclusive Hope was going to be this close to the audience, and it was even almost light enough to see, but yes this was the case. When they eventually got on, after 2 iterations of support, I was near enough to be able to see up Ms Sandoval's nostrils if I squinted a bit. In fact I've still got a cricked neck from craning up all night. I was expecting Hope to have aged in some reasonable fashion, but so far as I could see she has spent the intervening years in a hyperbaric capsule and it was like stepping back in time to her paisley underground days.
With Mazzy or with the Inventions, this has always been a paradox in volume, a band that should be very quietly phrased folk music that somehow come out like some sort of sonic rumble, enough to be on the "Louder...." version of those Jools Holland compilations, and thus it was tonight. I suppose it's gonna happen when the 50% stakeholder on the Inventions is otherwise the drummer in the world's loudest band.
I'm finding it to write about the actual gig. It was lovely, wonderful, a culmination, everything it should be, I could sit at the feet of this band and this singer every night of the week. There were obvious high points for me, in that I (whisper it) find the older stuff generally more melodic and the new stuff more ambient. To see Suzanne played live would have been worth travelling half way round the globe for.
No photos 'coz they were like the clampdown about that
