David Cronenberg's Wife live review
David Cronenberg’s Wife is not, regretfully, a solo female singer with an admiring hubby Dave watching from the wings, but actually a wonderfully grumpy six-piece ploughing the early Nick Cave/Mark E Smith furrow with aplomb. In fact so ingrained is their shambling, scratchy demeanour that they may well be an independent-label band of the mid-80s teleported forward twenty years.
Unfortunately, the catastrophic sound throughout tonight’s performance muddies leader Tom Mayne’s Cave-esque black humour and does little to help the band reproduce their recorded musical subtleties. Indeed, with six on stage, including three guitarists, they often appear hugely overstaffed for the noise being made.
However, what the PA destroys in precision it augments in aggression, and the band are frequently transformed from the eyebrow-raised, sardonic literati that appear on record to a far more bloody-minded, hostile bunch in performance – more Birthday Party than Bad Seeds – with the two-note melodies and buzzing guitars taking on a captivating snarl.
