It took Gary Numan announcing a series of warm-up shows for his Glastonbury debut to get me back down to Brighton for the first time in fucking decades. Granted, I already had several other visits marked on the calendar prior to the announcement of these shows, but these gigs being placed earliest in the sequence accelerated the process. So off I went to the seaside town of many a school daytrip, traversing the seafront for the last night of Numan’s triple bill, hoping to meet up with my mate Kate, even more of a Numanoid than I. Thanks to some train and ticket mishaps, that didn’t happen without some issues.
After a wait that had me taking in the impromptu volleyball championship across the road, I and the rest of the queue made our way into the venue. From that point, it didn’t take long for the audience to be greeted by the sight and sound of Agency-V, the support act for the evening, who put on a decent showcase of melodic electro-rock with tracks such as ‘On Dangerous Ground’, ‘Who We Used to Be’ and ‘We Can Erase You. They even threw in a decent cover of Garbage’s ‘Stupid Girl’, as well as a less successful joke about authoring the song first, for good measure.
Turning on my phone’s reception toward the end of their set revealed that Kate had arrived—only to be denied entry due to a ticket mishap. Fortunately, I was able to get it sorted and get her in before the act that drew us all the way here.
And what a performance said act put on! For all his talk of being less animated on account of not being too well, Numan seemed almost as sprightly and dynamic as when I’d last seen him at the Roundhouse. Unlike that Roundhouse set, the setlist featured a more expansive selection of tracks than those from Replicas and The Pleasure Principle. The likes of ‘Haunted’, ‘Pray for the Pain You Serve’, and ‘I Die: You Die’ took up comfy residence next to abiding, iconic staples like ‘Are “Friends” Electric?’, ‘Down in the Park’, ‘M.E.’, and, of course, ‘Cars’.
As before, he brought two of his kids onstage to sing a couple of numbers, Raven to sing a track of hers, ‘Nothing’s What It Seems’ and Raven to replicate her guest vocals on ‘My Name Is Ruin’. As with her Roundhouse performance on personal favourite ‘You Are in My Vision’, I struggled to hear Raven’s voxwork over everything else; Persia, however, was excellent, doing a sterling job of replicating her studio vocals. Generally, the rest of Numan’s band retained the high standard I’d come to expect of them, guitarist Steve Harris being a visual standout for all his gesticulation and mouthing at the audience.
In the end, another top-notch performance from Gary and co., well worth the crowded, irritating train journey down to the seaside and the long, far less irritating cab journey back (cheers for that again, Kate!).
~MRDA~
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