Stone Roses
Finbury Park, London
Friday 7th June
Motown classic ‘Stoned Love’ reverberates around the blazingly sunlit Finsbury Park as the bursting at the seams audience gives an applause as reverent as it is rapturous. Barely missing a beat from the end of the intro song to the first rumbling bass notes of ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ – the rushing crescendo of a song that would open their seminal 1989 album – the four figures on stage that, since October 2011, are once again the Stone Roses become instantly immersed in something far away from the adulation and roaring of the crowd. The entity that is the Stone Roses – an energy somewhat greater than the sum of its parts – is instantly omnipresent in all its magic and mystery tonight. Naturally, the London audience – many of which still seeing the Stone Roses for the first time – see tonight as nothing less than a celebration; even the fact Reni walked onstage holding above his head a t-shirt emblazoned with ‘Who the fuck is Liam Gallagher?’ – perhaps a nod to the band’s recently publicised cutting of ties with the Beady Eye frontman – was received with a playful cheer.
Over a year since their first reunion shows – affairs of upmost celebration but not without some turbulence – the band have begun playing around with the set. The oft-regurgitated derisions that the Stone Roses were something of a one trick pony with only a shallow back catalogue are quite rightly proven redundant tonight by a band that can miss out big classics that would be the cornerstones of lesser bands’ sets – ‘Sally Cinnamon’ in particular – yet can introduce b-sides and album tracks to only adulation. The shimmering jangle of ‘Elephant Stone’ is a delight; capturing not only the spirit of its original incarnation but much of the technicalities and intricacies that make it. Similarly, ‘Going Down’ maintains all of its original flavour but more groove orientated, dictated by Reni’s endlessly compulsive drumming. ‘Breaking Into Heaven’, however, is the addition that shines most tonight. A song from their 1994 sophomore record ‘The Second Coming’, ‘Breaking Into Heaven’ tonight is freed from the shackles of guilt-by-association to blossom into the furious Led Zeppelin stomp that was perhaps shackled by overproduction on record. Ian Brown’s rasping vocal penetrating a thick wall of guitars is a whole world away from the grooves and jangly psychedelia off their first record and suits the maturity of the band that the ‘in-between years’ have provided. Naturally skilled at the front of a stage, Brown knows when to send himself forward from the band and when to let the rhythm section and Squire’s guitars take centre stage. Characteristically Brown is a man of little words onstage, though tonight one noticeable pronouncement is his nod to the popular conspiracy theory of chemtrails.
The mid-set airing of ‘Fools Gold’ is when tonight really gets into its own; the ever expanding jam that now serves as almost the centrepiece to ‘Fools Gold’ has all the dynamism and build-up that pulsates through the best dance music, and this is precisely what ‘Fools Gold’ is. Indeed, much of the set is punctuated by well-honed jams between the band, perhaps a nod to the new material recently promised by the band. Ian Brown appears in as much thrall to John Squire’s guitarwork as the audience; with any rust gained in the years where he was more likely to pick up a paintbrush than a Les Paul now firmly shaken. As the Eastern flavours brimming from a unifying ‘Ten Storey Love Song’ prove, Squire’s versatility is crucial to his effectiveness as a guitarist; flitting seamlessly from the glistening arpeggiation at the start of ‘This is The One’ to the its roaring, grandiose climax – scenes of intense celebration illuminated by the presence of screaming red flares held aloft into the sky.
Shane Meadows’ newly released Stone Roses documentary ‘Made of Stone’ goes some way to explaining the rapture that greets each song tonight – the devotion inspired by this brooding enigma of a band that is wholly justifiable on nights like tonight. In the same way Meadows’ film re-evaluates and reclaims the band, the band have let the songs grow and take new shapes over the last year. Lesser acts would shirk at the thought of changing something like the drum intro to ‘I Am the Resurrection’, something seemingly so shiftless and perfect, yet Reni’s new groove tonight is as perfectly judged as it is exciting. As ‘I Am the Resurrection’ towers from blissfully melodic Revolver pop to something of an acid house frenzy, it’s clear just how much of a triumph tonight – and indeed the reunion itself- is. Now on their second lap of the reunion tour, the focus shifts inevitably to where next for the Stone Roses; perhaps within tonight’s set is already buried hints of varying degrees of subtlety, but nobody knows how to throw an audience quite like the Stone Roses, and in that is their beauty.
Set List:
I Wanna Be Adored
Elephant Stone
Ten Storey Love Song
Standing Here
Going Down
Shoot You Down
Something’s Burning
Waterfall
Don’t Stop
She Bangs the Drums
Love Spreads
This is the One
Made of Stone
Breaking Into Heaven
Elizabeth My Dear
I Am the Resurrection
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