Reviews

Artist: The Dealers
Venue: The Brook
Town: Chatham, Kent
Date: 23/04/09
Website: http://www.thedealersonline.com

I must apologise for reviewing a Dealers concert so soon after reviewing their performance at the ExCeL centre. Before submitting that review I checked with Neil whether he had any plans to cover their Chatham show, and I did think that I'd be able to go and see them without having to tell everyone how good they were.

However, Bessie introduced their song "A Bitter Pill" by thanking me for the previous review, so I felt duty bound to report back that Fatea got a mention on stage.

I'll try not to get carried away and write too much this time. Maybe the best thing I can do is to give you a couple of links to some clips on Youtube so you can make your own minds up about how good the Dealers are. I managed to film a couple of tracks, but as in many theatres it wasn't long before the theatre staff came round and told me that cameras weren't permitted.

I've posted "Doctor's Cabinet" from their second album at Youtube/Doctor's Cabinet and "Drowning", a song which will appear on their new album at Youtube/Drowning

Originally this gig was planned as the launch for their third album,"Charcoal on Black Paper", but as John Lennon once said, "Life is what happens when you're busy making plans". Bessie became pregnant, and suddenly had much less time for recording. The songs are all written, but finding studio time isn't as easy as they'd hoped.

I don't think Bessie had realised how tiring pregnancy was going to be, and how hard it would be to sing with someone squashing her diaphragm up into her lungs, but she did an amazing job, though she did find it hard balancing in her boots, resulting in her being a couple of inches shorter for the second set.

Not only did they play many of their brand new songs, they also played a lot of tracks from their earlier albums that I haven't see them play live before, including one of may favourites, "Silent Scream". This is a very unusual song, without verse or chorus structure. I guess it would be similar to putting a Shakespeare soliloquy to music, (though the metre is trochaic quadrameter rather than iambic pentameter).

Also, unusually, all songs that they played were their own. They didn't play a single cover, not even "Well Below the Valley", which I believe is planned for the third album.

I tried to keep a set list, but missed the title of one new song, a Pierre solo that he opened the second set with. I think the song has roots in William Blake's "Auguries of Innocence" (to see a world in a grain of sand). As their first two albums both contain ghost tracks, hidden away at the end, I guess that it's quite appropriate to have an unknown title in the set list.

So, sadly, we weren't able to take "Charcoal on Black Paper" home with us, just yet, but we went home with the songs ringing round our head. Fabulous, and roll on thenew album.

Set list was:
Set 1
Doctor's Cabinet
To Be With Me
Five Minute Star
A Bitter Pill
Drowning
Lost Keys
Was it Me?
Finding the One
Watch it Fall
You'll Never Break Me

Set 2
Pierre solo
Hangman's Lane
I Was the First
The Good Times
Bring Out Your Dead
Rodeo Clown
Hey Hey Hey
Silent Scream
Cost
I Don't See How
Shame
Full Circle

Encore
Forever
Wondering

Pete Bradley