Location: Čedad (Cividale Del Friuli) / Piazza Del Duomo / Italy
Date: 21.07.2013
And then Skunk Anansie finally come to our neck of the woods. Well, almost ours. Just across the border in Čedad, the day before Metaldays festival kicked off. If you’re headed to Tolmin for five days of festival, there’s only one sensible move in a situation like this: stretch the “metal vacation” by one day. Which means the following. Pitch your tent at the festival grounds the day before, then shoot off from Tolmin to Čedad, and head straight back to Metaldays afterwards. The upside? You kill several birds with one stone. The downside? The write-up runs late – you’d need at least a laptop with you to publish the report during Metaldays.
Anyway. We’re in Čedad. In the old town center. On the main city square, right next to the statue of Octavian Augustus. An idyllic setting. The venue, which vaguely recalls Titov trg in Slovenia’s Koper, is almost completely packed with some 5,000 red-hot Italian fans of the band. The evening was opened by Blastema, Italian knights of alternative rock. The band comes from Forli and they’re no spring chickens, having been around since 1997. Blastema are clearly a respected name on the home turf, because people applauded them loudly throughout their set, which lasted about 40 minutes. They’re accompanying Skunk Anansie on the entire Italian tour, and before that they opened for the currently hot Beady Eye at Pistoia Blues festival. The quintet serves up an interesting mix, a kind of crossover of punk, hard rock, metal and even blues. With the emphasis, of course, on building a modern groove. The atmosphere during the set is turned around mostly by the band’s one truly active ingredient: the vocals, commanded by Matteo Casadei, who has some special characteristics. If you’re only listening to the show, you could easily mistake him for a woman. On top of the clean vocal approach, the guy adds screaming escalations when needed, depending on the message of each song. Convincing. For a casual visitor who hasn’t seen them live yet or heard any of their studio releases, it definitely wouldn’t be a waste of time.
But of course, everyone came first and foremost for Skunk Anansie. Last year they released a new studio album called “Black Traffic” (2012), which is once again easy on the ear. It’s a new, excellent fusion of alternative groove springs, melodic catchiness, just the right dose of funk dance kinetics and a pinch of pop, brought in by the supple soul voice of the dark-skinned antelope Skin, with her incredible vocal range. After an eight-year hiatus, the band reactivated in 2009 with the comeback album »Wonderlustre«, which also brought them to Slovenia at the end of May 2010, when they played in Ljubljana (Gospodarsko razstavišče). When it came out in September 2010, that album shot to number one on the Italian best-selling albums charts. So much for the band’s popularity in Italy.
Skin (vocals), Ace (guitar), Cass (bass) and Mark Richardson (drums) took the stage at half past nine in the evening! As the rest of the night confirmed, the band gave plenty of room to their new studio album, mixing in the big hits of the nineties, but still opened the show rather unexpectedly. With an overlooked track from the album »Post Orgasmic Chill« (1999), and a totally wild one at that: The Skank Heads (Get Off Me). All the band’s trademarks were instantly born on stage. A massive, rasping guitar sound inherited from the sacred grunge days, a tight, thick-sounding bass line, chunky, hard-hitting commanding rhythms, and the bold, arrogant yet infectiously convincing vocal exposé of the one and only Skin. The band then hops in a time machine to the present and makes up for the “lost” 11 years, hitting straight ahead with full-blooded energy through the new song I Will Break You. The band stays in catchy punk territory with a riff backed by a simple bouncy rhythm as they go on with another new song, I Believed In You. The stage is flooded with blinding strobes, with occasional beams of red spotlights cutting through. So the opening stretch was dedicated to Skunk Anansie’s new ways of making music. The strings got “mixed up” in this part by a new wave song from the band’s older era, the well-known hit Twisted (Everyday Hurts).
The acrobatic Skin put her tightrope-walking skills and talents to a proper test for the first time during Weak, when she climbed onto the edge of the barrier separating the photo pit from the floor. With the help of the fanatical crowd holding her steady, she sang the band’s ultra hit in its entirety from that position. Next comes the intro to Hedonism, another evergreen, with the singer’s simple dedication: »This song is about fucking!«.
The band played an outstanding two-hour show. The crowd ate out of razor-edged Skin’s hand. The singer put a spell on everyone there with her incredible vocal characteristics, which include an extraordinary vocal range as well as the extraordinary power she’s able to build up during a performance. Above all, Skin wins you over with her passionate approach, because her messages simply boil over with excess emotion. A few times she also theatrically made use of a theremin, helping build the atmosphere of individual numbers. By the time the band got to the Rage Against Machine-style Yes It’s Fucking Political, it was getting clearer and clearer that the show was nearing its end, which they wrapped up with another hit, Charlie Big Potato. In the encore, Skin addresses the audience, or rather warns them, that she intends to go into the crowd. To that end she asks everyone to split into two halves and says she’ll only go down there if the audience promises not to touch her. When the audience answers yes, Skin says: »You always say “Yes!”, and then you break the promise!«. Anyway, during Tear The Place Up the singer jumps into the crowd and slowly makes her way all the way to the mixing desk, some 100 m from the edge of the stage, then lies back onto the hands of the audience, who slowly carry her back to the stage. A crazy experience! After the gentle (and expected) ultra hit Secretly, which had been given a little incense of attention in the first part of the set by the similar new single I Hope You Get to Meet Your Hero, the band closed out their show with one more hit, Little Baby Swastikkka.
Just when it smelled like the real end, Skin took the stage again at the loud demand of the audience, who just wouldn’t be driven off the floor. This time only in the company of Ace, who held an acoustic guitar. On behalf of Skunk Anansie, Skin heartily thanks the fanatical Italian crowd for a solid 18 years of support as she and Ace take on the “missed” hit Follow Me Down as a duet. In the closing part of the song, which the whole floor sings along with the band fanatically, Cass and Mark join them on stage too. Let me mention that this song was added to the set list especially for the Italian leg of the tour. Elsewhere on stages across Europe, Skunk Anansie don’t play this song on the »Black Traffic« tour.
What to say in closing? Total hypnosis, which only this British alternative rock band is capable of producing. In every superlative. Exceptional tightness, exceptional sound, exceptional chemistry, exceptional perception, exceptional precision in everything they do. But despite all these characteristics crowned with superlatives, the little needle on the scale that puts the music of Skink Anansie, as well as their stage presence, in a special spot on the rock globe is definitely the unique voice of the one-of-a-kind Skin, who once again gave herself completely to the audience on stage. This is one of the best female voices in the rock business, period, and it unjustly goes overlooked. The angry filly can by next year be tenderly soulful, breaking your heart. This is a one-of-a-kind vocal figure with exceptional vocal characteristics that could easily hold their own against the biggest performers of popular soul and R&B. Of course, part of that “sweet” element is carried over into the band’s alternative rock/metal point, which gives Skunk Anansie’s music great accessibility to the masses. Maybe the band will never again reach the success that was destined for them with the release of their first three albums in the nineties, since generations of music fans these days change faster than mushrooms after rain! But one thing is clear. The great stature and voice of the band, which confirmed its great authenticity and uniqueness with an extraordinary show in Čedad, remains unblemished, and with this show Skunk Anansie confirm that they’re maturing with the years and slowly molting into true gurus of their trade!
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
1. The Skank Heads (Get Off Me)
2. I Will Break You
3. I Believed in You
4. God Loves Only You
5. Intro / I Hope You Get to Meet Your Hero
6. Twisted (Everyday Hurts)
7. I’ve Had Enough
8. My Ugly Boy
9. Weak
10. Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good)
11. My Love Will Fall
12. This Is Not a Game
13. I Can Dream
14. Spit You Out
15. Sad Sad Sad
16. Because of You
17. Yes It’s Fucking Political
18. Charlie Big Potato
—encore I—
19. Tear the Place Up
20. Secretly
21. Little Baby Swastikkka
—encore II—
22. Follow Me Down (acoustic version)
