Gig: Paul Draper
Location: Wolverhampton Newhampton Arts Centre
Going by recent gig reviews you have probably noticed that Mr Trips and I are now “of a certain age” where the bands we enjoyed as youngsters are all doing comeback or reunion tours.
Our most recent was Paul Draper, the ex lead singer of mid-90’s indie darlings, Mansun. You may remember the big hits such as “Wide Open Space” and “Taxloss”. Mansun split up some time ago, and have never been and never will be, in any danger of reforming. However the fanbase remains as strong as ever and after a hiatus from performance, where he conentrated on developing new acts and producing things like The Anchoress album, Paul has now come back to touring, playing a mix of his own material and Mansun tracks. We missed his last visit to the area, where he performed the whole of Mansuns debut album, Attack of the Grey Lantern in Birmingham, so Mr Trips was determined not to miss this oppurtunity to see one of his heroes perform an intimate acoustic gig.
Newhampton Arts Centre is not your normal conventional venue. Based outside of the ring road and encompassing a few buildings that look like they are used for dance schools and performing arts. Tucked away in there is a small, very intimate concert venue, probably only capable of holding a few hundred people at most. However, it was perfect. The sound was good, the lighting good and overall, we were pretty pleased with the venue chosen by Paul.
Support was a performance by local lad Alex Ohm who fits the bill of an earnest young man with a guitar very well. He seemed very excited to be supporting Paul and spent his time inbetween songs telling us how much he listened to AotGL when he was growing up.
Paul was joined on stage by Ben Sink his regular touring guitarist. The crowd welcomed both warmly and it seemed like everyone knew each other straight away. Paul handled the rhythm sections and Ben took care of the lead parts. Pauls voice is as stong as ever and if you know Mansun you’ll know there are some very high, very long notes to hit on some of those songs. I’ve really enjoyed Pauls solo efforts as well and he played plenty of his work from his album “Spooky Action” here, but not my favourite track (Who Wears The Trousers), probably because it may not have translasted very well to acoustic. Wide Open Space made its natural appearance and Paul also treated us to an acoustic version of Disgusting that he says Ben was determined to play as he had spent ages learning the guitar parts.
Paul spent periods of time chatting to the crowd, reminiscing on his previous times in Wolverhampton with Mansun. It was a very friendly and intimate gig, almost as if you were in his front room for him and he just happened to be playing you some songs. Apart from the person in the crowd that threatened to tie him up and keep him in Wolverhampton. I don’t think she’d be invited round.
He finished with an acoustic version of Dark Mavis, from Attack of the Grey Lantern. Of course everybody there knew the words and he pushed for the crowd to be his backing singers on the na-na-na-na-na refrain that the song closes out to. As the crowd picked this up and sang it back to him, Paul and Ben put their guitars down and left the stage waving and smiling as the crowd sang them off.
A perfect evenings entertainment and we are looking forward to hopefully seeing Paul in 2019.