67. Johnny Marr

O2 Academy Brixton

23 October 2014

Not my usual gig buddy for the evening, but instead, someone I had met through work, who was a Smiths and Johnny Marr superfan, a regular knee bender at the shrine of jangly guitar gods.

Now, Johnny Marr has undergone a kind of late-career renaissance in the post-Smiths years. Freed from the increasingly unhinged right-wing rants of his former frontman, he’s settled into a new role among the mod-god elite, often spotted sipping pints in a Primrose Hill boozer with Paul Weller and Noel Gallagher, looking like he should be on the Fred Perry payroll. And now, with a new album Playland to flog, he’s out on tour, guitar in hand, setting off joyous fits of nostalgia-induced hyperventilation in ageing NME journalists.

The first half of the set was workmanlike. Competent. Pleasant, even. But let’s be honest, his solo material isn’t very standout. It would be perfectly fine in the background of a mildly stylish cocktail bar, but hardly the stuff of legend.

However, finally, we get to the good stuff: “Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before”, “There Is a Light That Never Goes Out”, and, for reasons best known to Marr, a detour into nostalgia with “Getting Away With It”, the Electronic anthem that was possibly the most criminally overplayed song of the Nineties.

Mercifully it is a short song and as it ends, out strides Noel Gallagher, and suddenly, we’re into a roaring duet of “Lust for Life”, before Marr closes the night with a blistering rendition of “How Soon Is Now?” It was a game of two halves, no doubt. But that four-song encore? Worth the price of admission alone.