I’ve remarked before - as have others - that John Grant could recite the phone book and cause grown men to weep, but the statement holds as true now as it did when he first performed Queen Of Denmark, his glorious debut solo album, 15 years ago.

Tonight’s show kicked off with one of that album’s weirder numbers (That's The Good News), and set the tone for the evening, with more synth than piano and a greater focus on Grant’s fuzzy and ever-so-slightly sleazy brand of clubland electronica. It’s something he mostly does well, as All That School For Nothing, Black Belt and It’s A Bitch amply demonstrated, but it was disappointing (ahem) to hear so many numbers from 2018’s Love Is Magic and latest album The Art Of The Lie that distorted his beautiful baritone voice with vocoders and other effects. It’s what we come to hear after all.

I’m guessing a few others felt the same way judging by the number of audience members that slipped out early, but those that did stay the course got plenty to enjoy, including the “funeral dirge” (his words) of Touch And Go alongside wonderful readings of Marz, Doesn’t Matter To Him, Queen Of Denmark (dedicated to Sinead O’Connor) and Substitution, a new song written as part of Grant’s collaboration with the Royal Ballet, an endeavour he says is likely to spawn his next album.

For now he’s happy to pirouette between ballads and beats - typically donning sunglasses for the latter – with scant regard for blame or to explain. Indeed, even though the normally jovial singer and his multi-talented three-piece backing band seemed in good spirits, his usual entertaining (and typically acerbic) banter was in relatively short supply. Maybe he was fed up at not getting the chance to take a seat at the restaurant table set up on stage where his bandmates, including Cov kid keyboard player Chris Pemberton, could kick back with a glass of vino when not joining in on one of their many instruments, or maybe he clocked a few of those punters drifting off before the end. Either way he, and we, all knew it was their loss, because this GMF is definitely worth hanging on for.

Three stars

Reviewed by Steve Adams at Warwick Arts Centre on Monday 13 October. 

3 Stars on Tue, 14 Oct 2025

JOHN GRANT - Reviewed by Steve Adams 

“Life is a battlefield each day” - the opening line of the opening song (Just So You Know) of John Grant’s set at Warwick Arts Centre couldn’t have been more on the money. The tune, from his recent album Boy From Michigan, doesn’t relate to ongoing Covid fears, police concerns, fuel, food and test tube shortages  but felt apt all the same.

The melancholic tune is actually designed to comfort the singer’s nearest and dearest after he’s gone, and hardly makes for an “are we gonna rock tonight?” opening, but is typical Grant - poignant and sardonic at the same time, trading heartfelt emotions with references to people who “don’t even pick up their dog’s poop in the park”.
The juxtaposition set the tone for an evening that saw Grant dance - in his inimitable, self-mocking way - back and forth between poignant piano ballads and full-on electronica, a trick he manages without skipping an electro beat. Heartbreaking numbers like The Cruise Room and Dandy Star shouldn’t work alongside the daft Sparks-like Rhetorical Figure or mercurial Pale Green Ghosts, but somehow do - and can be attributed to two constants - Grant’s genial personality and wonderful baritone.
The changing pace definitely gave the evening an added dynamic, as did the unheralded addition of multi-instrumentalist Cormac Curran, whose guitar and saxophone flourishes brilliantly augmented the keyboards of long-term cohort (and local lad) Chris Pemberton. The trio were clearly enjoying themselves too - Grant admitted he felt great on stage but ‘discombobulated’ everywhere else - but the number of empty seats and cautious mask-wearers bore testimony to the fact that not everyone is truly comfortable with, or ready to return to, live gigs just yet. For those that overcome those fears, this cracking show was wonderful reward.

on Fri, 01 Oct 2021