Review: St Paul & The Broken Bones, O2 Academy – ‘A band ripping up some swampy, Southern roadhouse sounds’

The evening started in a slightly more relaxed manner. Toucan is Irish singer song-writer Conor Clancy and, armed with just a beautiful 80’s blue-eyed Soul flecked voice and a guitar, he was charm personified. Maybe he missed his normal big band a bit and failed to silence the bar chatterers (why do people go to a gig and just chat? Stop that) but his songs were gorgeous. 

We need to talk about voices. Specifically, the one that belongs to Paul “St Paul” Janeway of Birmingham, Alabama’s eight-piece soul monster The Broken Bones. It’s an amazing thing. Part James Brown, part Al Green, part lunatic hellfire preacher.

It’s a controlled falsetto shriek and a silky, woozy croon. It’s the sort of voice that leaves a room emotionally wrung out but willing to listen to its very last gasp. It’s simply remarkable.

This gig was one of the last of the River Town series that the Bristol Beacon has farmed out across the city. Most of them, up until now, have stayed relatively close to a vague sense of Americana. This one took Americana to mean thunderous, funkier-than-a-mosquito’s-tweeter Southern Soul with the merest splash of wonky psych rock; there’s not much country music here.

What we have is the kind of thing you want to stumble across on an American road trip; a band ripping up some swampy, Southern roadhouse, going full soul band with a raging brass section.

Ten years, and four albums, into a career St Paul were, largely, preaching to the converted. A medley of 3000 AD Mass and Minotaur from the latest album, The Alien Coast, caused shivers up spines and little, funky hip wiggles.

By the time Janeway was in the crowd, standing above the mixing desk testifying with Sanctify the audience was lost in elegiac swooning, hands raised, swept along by the Soul storm erupting all around them.

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The pace barely dropped as one great rolling Stax-y groove after another shook the O2 rafters. Funky keys and a serious horn section (props must be given to Amari Ansari on the saxophone for at least one transcendental jazz solo) drove the dancefloor but it was always Janeway’s voice that stopped the show.

The Last Dance takes an “if the world is all going horribly wrong let’s dance like crazy” theme and welds it to a huge 70s disco stomper while I’m Torn Up is all dusty, sultry Southern Soul. By the time they roll ’round to crowd favourite Call Me, tall, drunken men were singing every word, pointing to the sky with eyes screwed shut in religious devotion.

Paul Janeway, his incredible voice and his extraordinary band were a beautiful, funky, soul-drenched, life affirming joy.

Main photo: Gavin McNamara

Read more: Review: Reef, O2 Academy – ‘One word for this set? Madness’

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