Once again, another gig year isn’t complete without one Chameleons gig… for the 13th time overall, and every “proper” gig year since 2017 (2020’s truncated Covid year notwithstanding), I’m off to see Mark “Vox” Burgess and his band of seminal Mancunian mysterious post-punk goth-adjacent rockers. Last time out was an abbreviated yet typically widescreen and thrilling showing at last June’s ill-fated yet fun “Forever Now” Festival (gig 1,392), so I’m ready for the full Chameleons treatment tonight, even if once again it’s in less than ideal surroundings at the soulless and cavernous warehouse that is Bristol’s Prospect Building.
Still
waiting on the new car, so I drove Rach’s Peugeot down a murky M4, finding some
confusing “No Parking” signs and bollards out along the PB’s nearby industrial
estate, but parking up down Chapel Street, near to the usual exit. Little did I
know that was going to bite my ass later… Route-marched around to the far side
entrance, arriving at the same time as Bristol friend and chanteuse
Keeley! So we wandered in together, finding tonight’s venue wasn’t the usual
large room but the smaller atrium, then running into Keeley’s friend Oliver
Cherer, usually of Aircooled and Miki Berenyi’s band, but also featuring in tonight’s
support! He eventually left us only to reappear onstage at 7.40 as part of a
3-piece support including dapper Chicagoan singer Eric Bradley, plus drummer
and focal point Lol Tolhurst, former founding member of seminal tinny New Wavers
turned Goth pioneers The Cure. “We’re playing these songs as they’re a part of
me…and a part of you,” Tolhurst explained during the initially gloomy and
mid-paced set of old Cure deep cuts, the haunting opening bars and stretched
hurtle of “A Forest” and tremendous tribal pounding rhythms of “The Hanging
Garden” highlights as the set wore on. An eerie, elegiac “All Cats Are Grey”
and the galloping closing double of “Boys Don’t Cry” and taut oldie “10.15
Saturday Night” also made up for the draggy opening.
We kept our central spot a couple of rows back, before the lights dimmed and a synth pulse overlaid by murmurs from the void heralded the band onstage at 9. “Hello Bristol, always a pleasure…” announced Vox following pounding opener “Where Are You” and baroque deep-cut “Intrigue In Tangiers”. The sound was fine, much better in this smaller atrium room than the larger echoey anodyne cowshed, but to me it felt that the band were easing themselves in early doors, aside from a fine double of the driving, undulating “Looking Inwardly” and a brilliant, soaring “Up The Down Escalator”, which was preceded by Vox musing, “people say how relevant these songs still are… I wish they weren’t [because if so] there’d be a better world…”
The languid, almost pastoral vibe of “Tears” preceded a couple of newies from 2025’s slightly disappointing “Arctic Moon” release, admittedly sounding better “live”; however the set, fine but still drifting a little for me particularly from a song selection perspective, really kicked into a higher gear with the tumbling drum intro of a brooding yet powerful “Soul In Isolation”, where Vox not only gave full rein to his authoritative and sonorous vocal for the “I’m alive in here” hook, but also paid lyrical homage to The Doors, Bowie and The Beatles during its strident widescreen outro. Stunning stuff, but even better as it then segued effortlessly into the intricate guitar flourish of a fantastic, plangent “Swamp Thing”. Now we’re talking! Lifelong blue Vox then bemoaned Man City’s current predicament and the fans’ lack of control of the situation, advising, “we need to get as much out of the present as it’s the only thing that exists,” that sense of carpe diem carrying into an almost joyous “End Of The World”. Eschewing the encore pantomime, the band then stayed onstage to deliver a concluding double of the sweeping triumphal sprawl of “Second Skin” and highlight of the night, the seething Smilodon roar of an elongated “Don’t Fall”, which saw Vox leap into the photo pit and stand eye to eye with us front rowers bellowing the resonant hook. A fine way to end a lengthy 1 hour 50 set which, unusually, took time for me to really shine, but which then ended on the highest of highs.
Bade
farewell to the bus-bound Keeley after we both bagged lists, then the nightmare
journey home started… because this was “a smaller event”, the usual exit was
closed, so I had to tramp the long way round in torrential rain back to my
parking spot. Sodden and drenched back at the car, I then had to inch my way at
snails pace through the flooded and pot-holed boneshaker roads of Fishponds and
Frenchay due to an M32 closure, before splashing along the M4 at 50 mph tops,
double wipered and full beam on, as Storm Austen really went biblical on us.
Home eventually, totally frazzled, just before 12.30. Yikes! So, once again the
Prospect Building underlined its status as a venue to be avoided, but The
Chameleons proved that even a variable performance from them still has
highlights aplenty, and knocks most bands into a cocked hat!
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