dEUS, Shepherds Bush Empire, November 7 2005
You can’t keep a good Belgian down – not a familiar adage but one that applies to dEUS. Any other band would have thrown in the towel after 14 years of bad drugs, mental breakdowns and career mismanagement, but somehow grizzled frontman Tom Barman got them here tonight. Granted, the players around him are a significantly different line up to the one that released violin-based indie dance classic ‘Suds and Soda’ in ‘94.
But this is still dEUS: dark, menacing, epic, clever - Radiohead with sex, Pixies without the piss-taking. A band it was once impossible to pigeonhole have gradually acquired a familiar (and delicious) sound – guitar lines like shards of black ice, the gruff private investigator vocal, the squeals of electric violin, the building sheets of noise. For ‘Sun Ra’, layers of sound build so thick the song is almost visible, and appropriately the excellent light show renders the band virtually invisible.
Compared to September’s electrifying ICA gig, Barman (in boiler suit) is only workmanlike, rarely engaging his audience until a head-shaking wig-out for ‘What We Talk About (When We Talk About Love)’. Blame touring, because by the end of the gig his voice is strained to a dry croak and the rest of them remain fixed to their places throughout.
Befitting a band that has festered in the cult arena for a little too long, there are a few interesting sorts here tonight - nodding their heads too eagerly, swaying to rhythms only a practised ear could discern. For Barman, who splits his time between dEUS and making award-winning arthouse films, this tour and new album ‘Pocket Revolution’ mark a last ditch attempt to push dEUS into a more mainstream existence.
In truth, mainstream success could be a way off, because for every pretty ‘Serpentine’ and jazzy ‘Nothing Really Ends’, it’s the moments of wrongness that we love dEUS for: “If you wanna come down for some hangin’ around” howls a banshee-like Barman with filthy druggy insouciance on ‘W.C.S. (First Draft)’. And the Tom Waits-goes-metal of ‘Theme From Turnpike’ is still a terrifying aural attack.
When dEUS play live it’s always a case of the sound quality trying to keep up with the complexity of their music. And the Empire struggles, particularly during a fuzzy ‘If You Don’t Get What You Want’.
But then there’s ‘Instant Street’, which (and I don’t think I’m overstating this) remains one of the pinnacles of 20th Century human endeavour. It takes us from Crowded House to Sonic Youth to Led Zeppelin, knocks us to the floor with a paeon to doomed love, then picks us up, turns us over and rogers us with the most evil guitar freak out since Zappa was twisting acid-fried hippy brains for a laugh. Visionary stuff – pray they don’t stop.
Matt Cartmell
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