Picture: Getty/Dave Benett
“It’s not a supergroup,” Zak Starkey told Channel 4 news of his new band. “It’s a fantastic group.”
With a line-up featuring Shaun Ryder and Bez of Happy Mondays/Black Grape, with sometime Whodrummer Zak Starkey and his former Oasis bandmate Andy Bell of Ride on guitar, Mantra Of The Cosmos could well be called that. And, can they get Ryder back into contention? His output has been slender in recent decades, though the programmed sounds of 2021’s Visits From Future Technology showed his facility with a pungent lyric was undimmed. Still, a 40-year veteran of bands, you couldn’t blame him for sticking with Celebrity Gogglebox and playing the hits with Happy Mondays.
Aptly their debut gig is at The Box, formerly the Raymond Revuebar, until 2004 a Soho institution of plucky British sex-grot (its founder Paul Raymond was played in the 2013 movie The Look of Love by Steve Coogan, who also played Factory records eminence Tony Wilson in 2002’s 24 Hour Party People). There’s a well-heeled packed house of expensively-dressed fashion persons – stout heiress Daphne Guinness is here and Pam Hogg’s on the decks – making the imminent entry of the mutant sound of north Manchester even more incongruous.
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When the stage curtains part, Bell and Starkey, resplendent in a yellow onesie and playing a Roland electronic kit, are laying down a bluesy groove. Mutterings off-stage in a familiar voice include the words “stinkin’ thinkin’” and soon Ryder ambles on, protective baseball cap and shades on tight, as if dressed for a car boot sale. Initially, he seems tentative, but as Bell attends to his effects pedals and Starkey stays absurdly tight and a blended homebrew of punk, funk, dub and rock reveals itself over 40-odd minutes, he gets loose and slips into his foghorn sneering of filth and eloquence. New single Gorilla Guerrilla is a glam stamper straight from the junk shop: elsewhere Ryder goes full Gil Scott-Heron with a rant which appears to quote an NME piece about revolution from 1973: another song seems to be about death. Throughout, mobile maraca soloist Bez does Bez, less manically than in days of yore but still able to adopt a convincing cruciform pose and 100-yard stare to remind the assembled that it time to Have It. To close, Ryder removes hat and shades for a mangled yet heartfelt version, now The Pogues don’t need it anymore, of Ewan MacColl’s Dirty Old Town.
The applause is loud, the band are beaming and there’s a shiver of surprise not unlike when Ryder and Bez exited the debris of the Happy Mondays and came back strong with Black Grape. There’s more songs and an appearance at The Glade at Glastonbury to come, but for now, it’s worth remembering that no one else does what Ryder does, and tonight, in suitable company, he was doing it again.
SETLIST:
Can We Love
Gorilla Guerilla
Put (The Boot) In
Call The Revolution
X What You Sayin’
Beast From The East
Dirty Old Town