With its Corinthian columns, stained-glass crucifixion scene and aroma of incense, the Christopher Wren-designed St James’s church on London’s Piccadilly is an unusual gig venue. And even taking into account its progressive reputation, it is an interesting setting for a man whose strict Methodist family told him he was going to hell for being gay, and who sings lines as spicy as the one on the T-shirts he sells: “I hope you know that all I want from you is sex.”
Then again, John Grant’s songwriting feeds on radical contrasts. He anatomises the ugliest depressive episodes and the bitterest break-ups with exquisite melodies and a chocolatey baritone. He likes his beauty to have jagged edges.
This show, his first in six months, is handcrafted for the Piccadilly piano festival. Grant has performed with rock bands, orchestras and electro-house outfits, but this minimalist lineup – Grant on the Fazioli grand, Chris Pemberton on synths – cries out for a set dominated by Queen of Denmark, the 2010 solo debut album that turned his life around. These songs are so handsomely constructed that they require little embellishment. Apart from some fabulously abrasive analogue squelching at the end of Marz and the croak of a Speak & Spell machine on Touch and Go, the synths are deployed with a light touch, gently suggesting bass and strings. Grant’s muscular piano-playing is the star.
Four songs are filled out by 10 singers from London Contemporary Voices. At first they are too muted and decorative, somewhat drowned out by the force of Grant’s performance, but they sound celestial on Glacier, his wrenching hymn to emotional survival in the face of prejudice. “It feels like a lot of people need to hear this one right now,” he says. “Myself included.”
More than once Grant says he is finding comfort in his most painfully candid material. A song might sound sad to you, he says, but to him it’s a real “hoot and holler”. The suggestion of a troubled state of mind gives extra weight to the magnificent screaming rage of Queen of Denmark and the utter desperation of It Doesn’t Matter to Him, but with Grant there is always laughter in the dark. On Grey Tickles, Black Pressure he describes paralysing depression before admitting, “There are children who have cancer so all bets are off, ’cause I can’t compete with that.”
As the show proceeds, Grant loosens up and gets chatty. He brushes off a request for Sigourney Weaver, a quintessential blend of comedy and pain, and instead starts Drug, an old song by his first band, the Czars. But halfway through he forgets the chords and decides to play Sigourney Weaver anyway. “I’m going to do what I should have done earlier,” he winces. “Son of a bitch.” With an artist as honest as this in a venue as intimate as this, the snafu is more endearing than embarrassing. Snatching a majestic finale from a moment of ragged vulnerability, it is an appropriate ending to a one-off show of uncanny power.
