“Thanks for coming to the end of our career.”
A downbeat opening comment from Jason Hazeley set the tone for an evening that was by turns sad and beautiful. For Ben and Jason well know that all beautiful things are sad – they have based their brief and tragic (stop me when the hyperbole becomes too much) career on this truism-for-overgrown-adolescents – and in consequence, many of their lovely, lightweight acoustic melodies took on an extra resonance for this, their last gig together.
Goodbye by Ben & Jason
First released in GB / 2003
Tracklisting
- Mr America (4:02)
- A Star In Nobody's Picture (4:23)
- You're The Reason (3:22)
- Hollywood (The Story Of A Domestic Explosion) (4:33)
- $10 Miracle (4:13)
- Orphans (4:37)
- Sail On Heaven's Seas (5:36)
- Window In - Window Out (5:20)
- When To Laugh (3:28)
Buy it Online
Not many bands have the nous to know when to give up, and of those that do, most decide to go quietly into the night. Not so B&J, who have complimented their eight-song debut Hello with a final nine-song offering called Goodbye, and embarked on a brief farewell tour. That said, their gentle approach to the harsh world of music ensured that they didn’t go out with much of a bang either. There were tears, there were embraces, and there was “something in both my eyes and a lump in my throat”, according to Jason, when he tried to say thanks to those who had helped him along the way. The duo played and sang until their emotions would let them play and sing no more, and with a melancholy rendition of When To Laugh, the last song from their last album, they left the stage after a two-song encore. In the words of one rather callous member of the beardscratchers forum, “That’s not how you end a gig,” but I was prepared to sympathise. Cruelly raised by the expectation of a nu-acoustic revolution, the duo have been badly disappointed, and it is a shameful thing that a career so promising should have come to such an end.
That said, there was a great deal about this gig that made us smile. Ben Parker’s falsetto is the nearest thing to the soaring voice of Jeff Buckley that we are likely to hear, and despite the dispiriting fact that, since I last saw him, he seems to have learned a number of lessons in expressive gurning and facial contortion from the likes of Will Young, the night was his. Jason Hazeley, I think, wrote most of the clever lyrics that we have come to love, but his stage presence is less than one might expect: he doesn’t sing much, and his piano parts are generally limited to the rhythm section. When I saw them in Oxford a year or two ago, he was constantly joking between songs, but tonight he was understandably subdued.
The best parts, then, were those songs that gave Ben his freest rein, notably a beautiful cover of Nick Drake‘s Pink Moon and new song (which he wrote and performed alone) $10 Miracle, which, for me, is the highlight of the new album. Other highlights were a never-before-performed Cartoon Heart, What I Meant To Say, Romeo And Juliet Are Drowning, and The Wild Things, all of which sound much more impressive in a live context than recorded. It is a point worth dwelling on that B & J never seem to have got their production right: it has always served to dilute and enfeeble songs that, while light, have nevertheless more substance than they seem. They have always been a fantastic live band, and it was a privilege to see them at a proper venue.
The set proper ended with an extra-long and rousing version of Air Guitar, which raised a wry grin at the line “last performance of our whole career / or so it seems”, and renewed the sense I had had throughout the set, that songs originally written about the ends of love-affairs had come to signify the end of a relationship between the two men which they would miss even more than we would. There were two consolations.
Firstly, Ben Parker is planning to continue the good fight. We cannot know if he will end up as another Aqualung, or in deeper obscurity, but at least he’ll still be around for those who want him.
Secondly, the support act, Polly Paulusma, was superb; a fledgling career, with its lack of funds and roadies, meant retuning her guitar before every song, but her voice was gorgeous, and every song a winner. Her first single comes out in March 2004, and will go some way towards filling what B & J once called the you-shaped hole. E.Kelly
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