You can tell it’s not going to be a normal gig from the off, as Devin Townsend spends the first few minutes tuning and chatting away, completely at ease, as if the audience was an old friend and he was sat in his living room. As he pings and strums away, musing about whether he likes his upcoming new album Lightworks or not (he decides he does, he thinks it sounds healthy, and good… he thinks, yes definitely good), he sets the tone for a gig that is genuinely intimate – not because it takes place in a small venue, but because Devin is completely natural and wholly authentic throughout.
I hadn’t expected to write a review about tonight – I wasn’t there on a press pass, but with a good friend – yet this was such a life-affirming, positive and uplifting evening, I felt the need to give something back to an artist who had provided one of the most entertaining nights I’ve had in a looong while (let alone all the times his music has been there when I needed it).
A warm-up strum through of ‘Let It Roll’ flows into ‘Funeral’, a moving and powerful rendition of the Ocean Machine classic. “Too morose” opines Devin as it fades out, before burping to lighten the mood. And from there on in, the spirit has been set. When the songs dictate, things will be serious, but at all other times, this is going to be like hanging out at Devy’s… with an awesome soundtrack. ‘Solar Winds’ ensures that!
As the person who once told us you could take anything, a benign object of any sort, and deconstruct it to its source (cheeseburger! cheeseburger!), what follows is a glorious shared evening of Devin deconstructing his own songs… hamming it up during a semi-ironic ‘Love?’, pausing to figure out what the next chord should be (and asking to be talked through ‘Slow Me Down’), singing parts of the songs rather than playing them, stopping to talk about how, if he had loads of money he’d be “a fucking menace” and have a choir on hand just to sing a call and answer in ‘Vampiria’ (which he then delivers himself, note perfectly), coming back to the chore of the necessary evil of interviews and promoting an album, how many elbows make a great backside, and taking the piss out of the solo in ‘Life’ (which is a bloomin’ cool little motif, if you ask me!), as well as finding time for a delicate and beautiful ‘Hyperdrive!’ and ‘Ih-ah’ combo.
But all the way through, as we flick from beauty and vulnerability to a funny bald man shouting “COCK!”, back to some exquisite renditions of excellent songs, to coffee house chat, we are reminded that Devin Townsend is a truly unique and wonderful human being. So self-effacing and humble, happy to mock his own mistakes – and in fact make them part of the show as he casually holds everyone’s attention for ninety joyful minutes – and so genuine and down to earth and inclusive with his demeanour it is easy to forget how incredibly talented he is not just as a guitarist and song-writer, but as a singer too, at one point unleashing an inhuman vocal scream before (somehow) harnessing it, control it, and turning it into a sweet falsetto and bringing us back into the song.
Wikipedia tells me it has been twenty-nine years since a leather-clad and (seemingly) head-tattooed Townsend first entered my life on Raw Power TV show – I still remember the first time I saw it, in my old bedroom at my parents house – singing on Steve Vai’s ‘Down Deep Into The Pain’, which inspired an immediate purchase of Sex & Religion. So, it’s somewhat surreal to have that memory brought crashing back with a bellowed request for ‘In My Dreams With You’ leading to said request being told to “fuck off”, then Devin effectively dueted with them on the chorus, before launching into a tale about the awkwardness of having to sing about sex in the company of the sex god, Mr Vai!
The words here can’t fully capture the brilliantly odd, genuinely funny and wholly entertaining evening, so I’ll bring this to a close by saying, if you have even the passing interest in Devin Townsend, and the opportunity to see him in a similar format you should absolutely take it up. Both myself (a fan for nearly thirty years) and my mate (who had, really, only a previous passing interest in Devin) left feeling it was one of the most enjoyable evenings in a long time, and it was something I didn’t really know that I needed but I’m so glad I got to experience. And I’ve got a feeling Lightworks is going to be good, too. And that The Moth is going to be FUCKED! UP!
Thank you Devy!
STEVE TOVEY