The Good, The Bad & The Queen

The Good, The Bad & The Queen take the stage at 1.30 in the morning after a forgettable performance from Joan As Police Woman and an endless sound-check. Short and at times illuminating, the album's tracks are played all 13 of them (ah… what a coincidence… 13), and at the end of the show Albarn even counts them out loud, starting from 1: "One, two, three,…". The frontman looks in great physical shape, even as the bottle of whisky he carries around the stage visibly empties. Simonon too is in fine physical fettle and, well aware of his status as a walking legend, breaks out the "Clash pose" every five minutes. Someone foolishly hopes to see him smash his instrument, as on that famous album cover, but this obviously isn't the night for that. Simon Tong keeps a lower profile, unleashing the psychic – more than psychedelic – sounds of his guitar.

Music that, even live, doesn't exactly invite you to smash things up, but to reflect; music that we perhaps accept willingly, or try to interpret beneath the surface, precisely because it's offered up by a supergroup of icons who have already had everything rock can give, who genuinely want to search for musical "otherness" – and actually find it. Played by a bunch of unknowns on their first outings, it would probably be laughed off.

These songs seem complete in their apparent incompleteness. In fact, the word "songs" might sound off for something so genuinely peculiar: an essential absence of choruses, compositions that run two or three minutes at most (except for the six-minute closing track of the album, performed midway through the set), a string quartet adding polish and choreography to what are truly "pieces" – in the sense that they feel almost like extracts, or concentrates, of much longer works, tracks in which an entire musical world flashes by in an instant, with breaks scattered here and there, and constant shifts in tempo and mood even within the same two-minute song.

Albarn, Simonon & co.'s supergroup rolls out pop funeral marches, delicate classical-punk embroidery, little Victorian gems set within sounds that veer now Middle Eastern, now Mitteleuropean. Disorienting and elusive like the Mad Hatter from Alice in Wonderland – which may be why so many on stage are wearing top hats and hats in general, starting with Albarn himself.

The show is short, too short, and that's the only flaw, since, as mentioned, only the tracks from their sole album are performed – but at least (another plus) without the now-tired ritual of encores.

Conclusion: recommended if you want something completely different, not recommended if you're expecting icons rehashing their old hits.

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