Mitch Benn & The Distractions, Mill Arts Centre, Banbury, 6 October

Whatever you think of him, it’s fair to say what Mitch Benn is doing at the moment is something entirely unique in the UK comedy scene. And the UK music scene for that matter. Technically, it’s a comedy gig. But there’s a band, and the between song banter isn’t much more than you get from a chatty front-man. The songs are funny, but most of them are musically accomplished enough that they’d be decent songs even without the jokes. And some of them aren’t even that funny: they’re amusing and will make you smile but they’re not the sort of comedy songs that are packed full of punchlines. Not most of them anyway.

The show is also almost entirely divorced from Mitch’s ‘day job’ club sets. African Baby and a certain rock-opera cross over, but even if you saw Mitch headlining the Glee Club the other week this tour show will be an entirely different experience.

It’s taken a long time to get to this point. Mitch has being touring with the band and putting out a new album nearly every year since 2004. The early shows with the Distractions were hit-and-miss: lots of the album stuff worked brilliantly but the shows were fleshed out with awkward re-workings of solo tracks (who remembers Crap Shag – Slight Return? Exactly.). Meanwhile banter was kept to a minimum as working with a band meant sticking to a setlist and keeping things smooth. But it was a bold experiment and five years on it’s matured amazingly.

With five studio albums under his belt, Benn no longer lacks for material in this pretty hefty show that weighs in at nearly two hours. He mixes up a lot of stuff from the new album with the highlights of the old ones to create a show that never loses it’s way and is paced brilliantly.

Now I’m going to talk about the set, so forgive me as I drop in to Mitch Benn – geek mode. Yes, I’m one of them that sits at the front and mouths the words at him. The show opens in an initially disappointing way: The Interactive Song, a bonus track from Too Late To Cancel. Except it soon turns out it’s been entirely re-worked with all the gags being changed, and you get to feel smug if you know who John Cage was. From there we get a bunch of stuff from the new album, a lot of which will be familiar to Now Show listeners. I do wonder exactly how beneficial it is to Benn’s career to do the Now Show. Plenty of people go along to the shows as they’ve heard him on Radio 4, but I know plenty of others who won’t as they think he’s not very good, based on what they’ve heard on Radio 4. And the truth is a lot of his Now Show stuff is either bad or mediocre – there’s a reason that of the 60 or so tracks he’ll write for that show each year, only four or five will make the album. But you try writing three topical comedy songs every week for a few months at a time.

Anyway, we get a whole bunch of new and kind of new stuff: Love Handles mocks the fake-ness of celebrity, Motorway Food is about exactly what it says, and Not Bitter is one of those songs with a laugh every line and is all the better for it. Disgustingly In Love is an interesting one for any dedicated fans. The lyrics are different but the song is the Busted parody Don’t Release Us In To The Wild from an old Now Show episode that actually featured Mitch with the band and not a backing tape. Might sound cheap, but it’s actually great as that song had a ridiculously catchy riff but would have made absolutely no sense outside of the very specific context of the news story involved. I’d love to see If We’re All Still Here from that same episode released in some form some day. And besides Scary Weirdos was a Now Show Christmas track. Or the other way around. And now back to stuff that normal people can understand.

The first half of the show also features two songs that deserve a special mention. “Now He’s Gone” features bass/keyboard/backing-vocalist Kirsty Newton on lead vocal. This is great for three reasons: a) she’s awesome (not to mention ‘fit’ as my friend ably pointed out, like I hadn’t noticed), b) it’s a great change of pace and c) you get to see Mitch dance around the stage while playing guitar. “West End Musical” also trades lead vocals between the two of them, ending in this intricate two-way thing that is just brilliant. The fact is, not wanting to denigrate the efforts of drummer Ivan who is fantastic, the whole thing is practically a two-man show. Kirsty’s backing vocals just add so much to the whole thing (she even does the ghost noise in Macbeth) and musically it’s probably fair to say she outshines Mitch. Lucky for him she’s not as good at writing funny songs (although her own, not funny, band Siskin are worth checking out). She’s been playing with Mitch for over five years now and it shows: there’s a level of comfort and familiarity there that makes the whole thing seem so much more natural than at those early shows, and they take the piss out of each other like only friends can. It’s pretty much impossible to imagine the show without her. And she’s better on piano than Rick Wakeman. And nicer to look at. Bad call on that video.

During the interval Mitch goes off to write a song about some topics suggested by the audience. When it works, this is brilliant. I’m spoiled, having last year saw him put together a brilliant Irish jig in relation to their government underwriting the banks during the economic crisis: “Give us your money lads”… this time, not so much. It rhymes and it just about works but isn’t exactly brilliant. Then again, the fact he can come up with anything at all in 20 minutes is impressive.

The second half sees a bit more old stuff, including tracks like Beatles parody Please Don’t Release This Song given a new sense of relevance with all the re-releases. There’s a new Elvis parody (though the old one was enough, really) and semi-serious song Where Next?. I actually like all of the non-funny tracks on the albums, there’s enough now for an EP. Hmm. The show is bought to a close with (My Name Is) Macbeth before a very short gap (“It’s been too long a day to milk it”) leading in to a quick encore of Peel tribute track, A Minutes Noise. It’s a fitting way to end an awesome night.

It’s interesting to note that the ‘hit single’ Everything Sounds Like Coldplay Now is absent entirely, as is I May Just Have To Murder James Blunt, which demonstrates Mitch’s justified confidence in the material he is playing. I’d personally have liked to heard last year’s Alternative Energy Song as it’s just musically so fun, but I think that demonstrates how far this whole thing has come: that I can come out thinking “it’s a shame he didn’t do that one”.

The tour is only just starting; you can see the dates here and I really do urge you to go. It’s an entirely unique night out, an experience you just won’t get anywhere else, and for that reason alone it’s worth giving a go. It also has enough variety that there’s something there for everyone. This year I went with a friend who’s never been to a live comedy show before. Last year I went with my Dad and younger brother, the latter of which hates my taste in music and comedy. They all loved it.
And lastly thumbs up to the Mill Arts Centre in Banbury, who didn’t do what a lot of venues do when faced with a show like this and do the sound like a rock gig so you can barely hear the words. When the words are half the point. Bless you Mill Arts Centre, for having a fucking clue.

Dean Love : 24 Oct 2009 01:25 |  Tags: Comedy Music |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem