1,283 BOO RADLEYS (2 sets), Jules Reid, The Martial Arts, Reading South Street Arts Centre, Tuesday 13th June 2023

 

Hoping for a bounce back tonight, in more ways than one… following an indifferent Interpol gig last time out, mine hosts tonight are recently reformed (well, 3/4s of them, anyway…) 90’s Britpop stalwarts The Boo Radleys. Well, actually, lumping the Boos in with the Britpop crowd, an era which not only celebrated boorish misogynistic laddishness but also produced some crushingly dull landfill indie (step forward The Bluetones, Embrace and the kings of all dullards, O-bloody-a-bloody-sis), does them quite the disservice… similar to the likes of Pulp and Suede, the Boos were ploughing their own idiosyncratic furrow well before “Loaded” started sticking rock bands and union jacks on their covers, producing a work of widescreen 60’s infused psychedelic indie-pop excellence in 1993’s “Giant Steps” and taking a quantum leap forward from their difficult, more shoegazey origins in the process. And this tour promised a 30^th Anniversary full run-through of this enduring and sprawling masterpiece. It’s going to feel weird hearing this material without its’ author and sole missing original Boo, guitarist and friend-of-a-friend (hi Corin!) Martin Carr as part of the line-up, but these songs deserve to be heard, so I grabbed tix before this one ultimately sold out.

 So I hit the road for a sun-drenched drive to Reading, parking in the nearby cavernous Queens Road Car Park and hitting the venue just before 7.30 doors. A sell-out, maybe, but very quiet indeed early doors as I made my way into the very Gloucester Guildhall-like studio venue; in fact only 3 of us, myself and a pair of fellow Shiiiners, were present to greet opener The Martial Arts at 7.45! A one-man band, this; an impressively yellow trousered chap with guitar and floor fx pedals/ backing tapes. I’m usually no fan of this stuff, but his brief 60’s-inflected 3-song vignette was warm, big hearted and melodic, and seemed to answer the question as to what Teenage Fanclub would sound like if fronted by Gene Pitney! So I was kindly disposed to him.

 

Next up were the Boo Radleys! They took the stage in front of a thankfully fuller crowd and to a pastoral backing track at 8.15, then burst into the lush descending hook of equally 60’s-influenced opener “Find The Answer Within”, before black-clad vocalist Sice, resembling Frank Black’s Scouse nephew (!), scolded himself (“you can tell it’s been awhile; Sice, remember to turn your amp on!”) then gave us the heads-up on tonight’s proceedings. A brief career-spanning set first, then “Giant Steps” later… So, this opening 40 minutes touched on some post-Britpop stuff (the lazy, hazy summery vibe of “From The Bench At Belvedere”), recent post-reunion material (a funky “The Unconscious” about Sice’s psychoanalysis experiences (!) and “Full Syringe” a Fanclub-like chunky Big Star rocker with lovely 3-part harmonies, a happy feature throughout both sets) and a couple of older deep cuts to finish (the dramatic moody proto-shoegaze “Finest Kiss” and my set highlight, the juxtaposition of the splendid undulating guitar hook and dissonant verse of oldie “Lazy Day”), all played with verve and no little humour, sounding clear, splendid and well balanced, and promising much for the main set.

 A quick break before returning to my front row, house right spot for main support, Oxford-domiciled expat Scouser Jules Reid. A Gaz Brookfield-esque folk-punk solo acoustic guy complete with oft-deployed mouth organ, his set featured a poignant song about former Swindon Town player Joey Beauchamp and a lament about his wife’s ex-boyfriend’s sports car parked outside his house! A decent set which would go down well in the Tuppenny, methinks… Chatted with fellow punter and Reading local Andy afterwards about the venue – sell-out or not, the hall only ever seemed about 2/3rds full tonight! The Boos themselves were back on in fairly short order, the taped backing opening ceding to the strong-armed beat and descending hook of a loose-limbed, lugubrious “I Hang Suspended”, again sounding clear, fulsome and splendid, and we were away…

 For a sophomore album from a then relatively unknown indie band, 1993’s “Giant Steps” was ambitious in the extreme, incorporating widescreen, almost symphonic melody, Doors/ Beatles-influenced psychedelia and heavy dub rhythm, challenging but rarely over-reaching. And The Boos did it full justice tonight with an excellent run-through, one or two tiny bumps and bum notes along the way but for a first night of the tour, a well-rehearsed and surprisingly together sounding set. The dubby, change of pace “9^th And Fairchild” featured some excellent complex drum parts from Rob Ceika, “Butterfly McQueen”’s dramatic descent into discordant noise challenged Sice’s high register vocals, the man responding with a fine performance, and “Barney And Me” was irresistibly groovy, powered along by Tim Brown’s excellent bass fretwork, and got me throwing shapes from my front row spot. In lieu of “Run My Way Runway” (“it’s just noise…” complained Sice), an old B side, the widescreen Tex-Mex of “Buffalo Bill” featured mid-set before a medley featuring the stripped-back, pure McCartneyesque “Thinking Of Ways”, again coaxing a fine vocal from Sice.

 

But we were building up to one thing… “we released this twice to get it into the charts! Neither worked, so we had to write “Wake Up Fucking Boo”!” quipped Sice, before the languid dub and trumpet embellished opening of “Lazarus” suddenly burst into strident anthemic life, the soaring majesty of The Boo Radley’s finest hour easily tonight’s highlight for me. Brilliant. Sice, who’d been an affable and chatty frontman throughout, a perma-grin never far from his features, then dedicated jaunty, Beatles-esque closer “The White Noise Revisited” to Martin Carr, “who wrote the whole damn thing,” rounding off a set which felt like a celebration of a seminal and still wonderfully melodic 90’s album. That wasn’t it, though, as Sice and Tim popped out for brief chats; I told Sice my Martin Carr “litany of tunelessness” story, and he insisted on checking out the 90’s Boo Radleys setlist that Martin had referred to in that way (from their Portsmouth 1995 gig, no. 290)! Lovely bloke, and both he and Tim were complimentary of my dancing along (Sice commenting, “you looked as if you were having a great time!” my rejoinder being, “I was, but the bloke who was having a better time was you!”). I eventually tore myself away for a difficult exit out of Reading (getting stopped by every! Single! Fucking! Red! Light!) and midnight arrival home. A great one, this; expectations exceeded by some distance… a proper Boo Radley bounce back!