Review: Money, The Lantern

Jamie Lee, the charismatic and brooding frontman of Money, steps down off the stage at The Lantern and onto a speaker with the microphone and a tangle of its trailing wire clutched in both hands.

His guitar hangs loose around his neck and he stares ahead to the back of the crowd with his head tilted down as he opens A Cocaine Christmas and an Alcoholic’s New Year – a ranty, messy sort of ballad.

He looks like he’s just come in off the street – unshaven and wrapped up in a thick duffle coat and scarf – and straight onto stage for an impromptu gig.

But looks deceive. Behind this rough and careless exterior is a fine-tuned performer delivering a fine-tuned performance.

A Cocaine Christmas is the most disjointed and disorganised track of Money’s new album Suicide Songs, the captivating follow-up to their 2013 debut record which saw them tipped by many to make it big.

The rest of the new material is neat and full, with warming strings (played live on stage) accompanying Lee’s coiling choirboy vocals.

And it is played with barely a note out of place at the band’s short visit (55 minute set) to Bristol. Despite at one point, in a rare bit of chat with the crowd, Lee’s promise that we’re about to witness “me fucking up my own songs”, the band lift their songs from soft beginnings up to crashing crescendos and back down again expertly.

New work You Look Like a Sad Painting on Both Sides of the Sky and I’ll be the Night are especially powerful and a joy to witness live with the full band.

Unfortunately though, The Lantern is less than half full. Despite the strength of Money’s new work, they could have played at the Louisiana again – where they performed while touring A Shadow of Heaven in 2013.

The thinly spaced crowd here are silent and motionless (apart from a small group of men and women with lipstick smeared around their mouths who somehow manage to dance – are they part of the show?) for the most part of the gig, perhaps stretching to a nod of the head every now and again as they nurse plastic pint cups.

It’s hard to tell whether it’s the band responding to the crown or the other way around, but the performance is subdued in comparison to their last Bristol visit where Lee was on and off stage grabbing beers and chatting away in the middle of his set.

But then again, if a band is going to put out and album called Suicide Songs, perhaps this is to be expected.

The short set draws to a close and Lee walks straight off stage with a short “thank you” dressed exactly as he walked on, ready to go back out into the night – or to the pub, as we find out minutes later at the Christmas Steps.