Well, the gig was last night. 17 songs played, seven from the new album and ten classics. The classics were better received, mainly because people could sing along with them.
Not every song from Third was played in the same way as on the album. Threads, for example: in the studio it wouldn't have sounded out of place on either of the 90s albums. Live, it was like Metallica fronted by Patti Smith.
I was dead centre and four or five yards from the stage ... that position where you don't so much hear the bass percussion as use it for a pacemaker. And yea, verily, the house was rocked to the ground by both artists and audience. The feedback hitting the band was so intense that by the end of the encore Beth Gibbons looked like she'd been smacked in the face with an 8lb lump hammer wrapped in multiple orgasms, and I'm pretty sure there were at least six cases of spontaneous human combustion in the crowd. Fucking incredible night.
