Dave Gahan and Soulsavers, review: you can take the rock star out of the stadium, but...
When not writhing extravagantly about as frontman for the ear-blistering electro rock of synth pioneers Depeche Mode, Dave Gahan can sometimes be found exploring the more retro sounds of roots Americana on a side project with UK production team Soulsavers. Their rare concert in the salubrious environs of the London Coliseum was presented as an opportunity to perform recently released third album, Imposter, in full.
An elegantly printed programme announced a set of classic singer-songwriter cover versions along with a smattering of blues, soul and country standards. The staging was refined, the setting was intimate and the pacing relatively sedate, yet the dramatic impact was every bit as forceful as Depeche at full sonic blast, extravagant writhing very much included.
The curtain rose on a nine-piece band silhouetted against a velvety red backdrop. Vintage Hollywood spotlights picked out Gahan at the microphone in a silky red suit, slicked-back hair and heavy framed glasses, looking like a cross between a lounge lizard and a Mafia accountant. The band struck up a slow, atmospheric march through Dark End of the Street, a soul classic well suited to Gahan’s dark, brooding baritone.
At 59, in recovery for 25 years having survived heroin addiction, overdoses and suicide attempts, he has plenty of life experience to bring to songs as intense as Bob Dylan’s Not Dark Yet and Mark Lanegan’s Strange Religion, and he enters them with an air of thespian inwardness, as if summoning deep inner resonances.
As the sharp-suited ensemble delivered a delicately wrought version of the evergreen Lilac Wine, the mood was as attentively reverential as you might expect at an august Edwardian theatre that’s usually home to opera and ballet productions. The last Depeche Mode tour included a homecoming date for at least 80,000 at the London Stadium in 2017, somewhat contrasting in scale with the couple of thousand faithful seated at the Coliseum.
“It’s quiet,” Gahan noted. “I like it!” But then the band launched into a raw version of Elmore James’s blues I Held My Baby Last Night and all decorum was thrown to the wind. It was as if something clicked in Gahan. He bent his knees, his bum stuck out like Marty Feldman impersonating Mick Jagger, he flapped his elbows like a funky chicken, and he shimmied about the stage like a man possessed by the beat.
For the rest of the gig, from baroque ballads to dark rock dirges, Gahan became the weirdly compelling performer his fans know him to be, contorting his body like an over-enthusiastic interpretive dancer. At first, I had wondered if employing three guitarists was excessive under the restrained circumstances, but it certainly made sense when James Walbourne (of the Pretenders and Rails) cut loose during Cat Power’s Metal Heart.
The sound swelled to epic proportions with Gahan at the front, arms spread, as if exultantly channelling every note. Dynamic arrangements rose and fell in volume and tempo, creating space for a sorrowful piano and double bass reading of the Charlie Chaplin ballad Smile and gentle lilt through Elvis Presley standard Always on My Mind. But once Gahan’s inner dancer had been unleashed, he could hardly stop himself moving, even during moody instrumental passages, his body snaking and vibrating with the music.
Encores allowed Soulsavers to take a blues rock tilt at Depeche Mode’s 1989 hit Personal Jesus, which had the Coliseum audience on its feet, with a sudden rush to the edge of the stage. I bet you don’t get too many of those scenes at the ballet. You can take the rock star out of the stadium, but you can’t take the stadium out of the rock star.
At Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London W12, on December 7. Tickets: davegahan.com
