Jesse Malin: songs about [and for?] God’s low-lifers

Suddenly one becomes aware of couples swaying on level one, the same is mirrored in the stalls… Just minutes after a rocker blasted through this fine old theatre… But, that does not satisfy Jesse Malin who, at one moment, admonishes his audience for being unmoved, reserved, cold… But, the show continues splendidly despite our shameful non-perfomring.

Malin then quickly adds that his new album, 'The Heat', has been delayed by his eagerness to add few more songs before handing over the master-disc… When you hear the second record you’ll [re]appreciate that quality can't obey schedules. ‘The Heat’ follows the acclaimed 2002 debut, ‘The Fine Art of Self-Destruction’, and then improves, evolves and develops.

The New York singer-songwriter still delivers his fascinating stories in tones and words, about heartache, loss, city vignettes of despair, dirt and resentment, or it is defiance: ‘Silver Manhattan’ (urban decay), ‘Arrested’ (prostitution), ‘Basement Home’ (incest), ‘New World Order’ [the current, terrorized/traumatised Westworld]…

The current single, also performed last night, ‘Mona Lisa’, is about the aftermath of 9/11 atrocities too, although there are pure road-songs on the new CD, the result of this album being written and recorded inbetween extensive touring the maiden disc. ‘Hotel Columbia’ is about the famed London rock landmark for acending/descending artists, on par with NYC’s ‘Chelsea Hotel’. The title is, Columbia Hotel being its official name, a very smart nod to ‘Hotel California’. Anyhow, it's a momentous rocker.

These slow-to-glow tracks glide in effortlessly led by the be-suited [in the 1960s style outfit], black of course, frontman who conducts his backing foursome into haunting, but never melancholic, tracks and noise-cuts that move even the seasoned media-types. Jesse even steps off stage to entertain frontline of fans from a kissing proximity.

Neil Young’s ‘Helpless’, dedicated to Bush and Blair, is sung by a choir of a thousand with a goose-pimple effect, who then adored 'Queen of The Underworld'… These, most of the time, epic songs are populated with troubled humans and we can learn a lesson, or several, here. That’s why the audience weren’t reacting more instantly, they were lost in new imagery, new worlds captured within the fresh tracks. Malin tends to adopt ‘voices’ of different song-characters with a very convincing versatility.

A strange rhyme pops into the cranium during the show: ‘There is no hope without dope.’ It’s got nothing to do with this show but a conversation earlier in the day regarding Aldous Huxley’s dystopian ‘Brave New World’ book [which was inspired by an earlier Russian book, ‘We’, by Yevgeny Zamyatin]... Jesse Malin’s tales of flawed, sinning and tragedy-infested humanity fit it perfectly.