Last Friday, the veteran Dodgy played their 1996 album ‘Free Peace Sweet’ in full at the sold-out Islington Academy in London.
*images courtesy Stephen Fothergill.
What was their highest charting album of the time was to be their last for sixteen years (excluding ‘Real Estate,’ which frontman Nigel Clark did not feature). Despite the success of the album and singles alike, the band split in acrimonious fashion, not reforming until 2008.
What caused ructions around then has dissipated now. They easily recapture the youthful energy of ‘Trust In Time’ and ‘You’ve Gotta Look Up’. The former’s La’s jagged edges chime joyously with Clark and drummer Andry Priest’s sumptuous harmonies. Harmonies which truly take flight and soar on ‘You’ve Gotta Look Up’.
Despite the nostalgic joy that ‘Good Enough’ brings, it was, and is, former singles ‘In A Room’ and ‘If You’re Thinking of Me’ that lit up the album and this gig alike. ‘In A Room’ swayed with an ease that, rightly or wrongly, a generation of bands and media has tried to recapture. The poignancy of ‘If You’re Thinking of Me’ burrows straight to the heartstrings with its touching sentiment. Both catch fire creatively via Andy Miller’s guitar. The solo on ‘In A Room’ takes on a warped Stephen Stills number with intoxicating results. Whereas his blasts on ‘IYTOM@ tap into the majesty of Roger McGuinn's lysergic energy and Gene Clark’s jaw-dropping melancholy.
Cutting through West Coast and Laurel Canyon melodies was ‘U.K. R.I.P.’ cutting through their West Coast melodies with the hints of Transglobal Underground, trip-hop, and the Levellers’ trippier moments. Originally an anti-Britpop triumphalism rhetoric, it now takes on darker tones in a post-Brexit, post-Johnson, and post-Truss Britain.
Twenty-seven years on, Dodgy and ‘Free Peace Sweet’ still have something to say sonically and spiritually. Here’s to another twenty-seven.