Dallas Green, Mr City And Colour himself, takes to the stage dressed in dark clothes underneath a smart brown trilby style hat. Picking up his semi-acoustic guitar, he stands centrally under a single spotlight, and opens with ‘Fragile Bird’, singing gracefully through his natural salt ‘n’ pepper beard. The dulcet tones of Green’s unmistakable voice are even more exquisite in real life than they are on record.

During the first brief period of silence, the positive heckling starts and becomes a permanent feature throughout, with “WE LOVE YOU DALLAS!” and the like bellowed at the Canadian from his seated three-tier audience. People are not exactly sober in this theatre, and Green is here for it – it’s Saturday night after all – as he receives the praise humbly and with warmth.

Session musician Matt Kelly soon joins him on stage for ‘What Makes a Man?’ and stays for the rest of the performance, accompanying him with an additional guitar and backing vocals. Both sit under a semi-circle of lights rising from the floor and back down again, changing between blue and pink, red, and all of the colours of the rainbow at once throughout the show. It’s a delicately soft use of light to highlight the solo artist, who stands before us without any sort of backdrop or banner to risk distraction.

Only three songs from City And Colour’s latest record, ‘A Pill for Loneliness’, are played, including ‘Difficult Love’ – which Green prefaces by saying that he “didn’t know how much [he] was going to need it right now”, dedicating the song to anybody who is “going through it”. At this point, Green’s sadness is almost tangible, and the emotion he plays with is raw as he pours his heart out. The singer-songwriter has always been notoriously private, using social media solely to publicise his art, and it makes this admission of vulnerability feel particularly touching.

As it’s the final night of this 15-date European tour, Green name checks the crew and implores the audience to applaud their work before playing ‘Blood’ as the 16th song of the night and swiftly exiting stage left.

He returns for an encore, jokingly explaining that he wasn’t leaving the audience waiting for more in the style of U2 front man Bono, rather that there is practically a maze to get through backstage to use the facilities. Green restarts with ‘Comin’ Home’ before seamlessly meshing it into Alexisonfire’s ‘This Could Be Anywhere In The World’. Alexis fans in the room are practically bursting with glee over this stripped back version of a legitimate favourite and sing along word for word, before the show finishes with ‘Little Hell’ and ‘Sleeping Sickness’.

Irrespective of what he’s currently dealing with in his personal life, Dallas Green left his whole heart and soul on stage tonight, like the true artist he really is.

CHELSEA SMILE

So, as they roll into the capital to play Camden’s famed The Roundhouse venue almost three years to the day that they last performed here – on what will be the final gig of the decade for many of us – they already have a fully captive and insatiably hungry crowd. There’s no point checking the Setlist FM cheat sheets from the most recent shows in the hope of pre-planning beer and toilet breaks when you’re dealing with a band like Clutch, because they’re capable of doing a different set each night – and that’s exactly what they usually do.

The holiday season has begun for many and as Clutch are known as the drinking man/woman’s band anyway, most are cheerily getting as many jars in as they can before it’s show time. The general atmosphere is one cultivated by a mature and likeminded community, with punters upbeat in the knowledge that they’re certain of exactly what they’re in for – a safe space, and a good time.

Front man Neil Fallon and co take to the stage, casually dressed as always, and promptly open with oldies but goodies ‘Burning Beard’ and ‘The Dragonfly’, Fallon articulating each lyric with energetic force under deep fuchsia lighting and in front of a huge banner stating the band’s name in bold red letters.

Clutch released their latest album, ‘Book of Bad Decisions’, in September 2018, so they’re not particularly promoting the record at this point and quickly burn through two of the only three songs they’ll play from it tonight – ‘How To Shake Hands’ and ‘A Good Fire’, the latter being a politically charged anthem. Precious time isn’t wasted by chatting when they’ve no shortage of music to play and ‘Mercury’, ‘Profits of Doom’ and ‘(In The Wake of) The Swollen Goat’ are all belted out as we swill beer, dance manically, and imitate lyrics. Fallon addresses the audience with a charmingly polite “thank you very much” before he’s handed an electric guitar and, after a hasty fiddle, exclaims “Okay, moving right along” before bursting into ‘A Quick Death in Texas’.

Then it’s back to their current release with ‘In Walks Barbarella’, which precedes ‘10001110101’ – a bona fide Clutch anthem that has everyone in the room repeating the two digits with the competence of providing their personal phone number to a new acquaintance.

They then blast through ‘Struck Down’, ‘Sucker for the Witch’, ‘Subtle Hustle’, ‘Ghost’, ‘Nobel Savage’ and ‘The Face’ before it’s time for the encore just over an hour after they started. It might sound like a short gig, but thankfully, the Americans are men of few words and prefer to concentrate on the songs, allowing their fans to fully immerse themselves in the concert.

The brief encore begins with Fallon directly encouraging us to see them again, “Come on down to Ramblin’ Man”, he urges us, “It’ll be a grand time!” It would have been absolutely criminal for Clutch to have not played ‘Electric Worry’, and as they close the set with this the inebriated crowd collectively bellow, “Bang, bang, bang, bang! Vamanos, vamanos. Bang! Bang! Bang! Vamanos, vamanos!” before they finish on a cover of ‘Fortunate Son’, a Creedance Clearwater Revival classic.

Finally, Fallon bids us adieu, “You’ve been fantastic, we wish you a prosperous 2020!” He then grabs a printed out set list from the stage and points purposefully at a fan he’s handpicked in the front row, gently handing it to them and giving a meaningful double thumbs up as he imparts with the money-can’t-buy memento.

What a guy. What a band. What a night.

CHELSEA SMILE

Californian metallers Machine Head have come to town to celebrate 25 years of their debut album, ‘Burn My Eyes’, by playing it in its entirety front to back before a sold out crowd. An Instagram post, where front man Robb Flynn seemingly confirms that the band will start at the early bird time of 7.45pm, has gone viral, and now punters are scrambling to finish their pints and get inside stat.

Just shy of 8pm, the house lights suddenly fade to black and the usual “Machine Fuckin’ Head” chants start bellowing throughout the venue. The band take to the stage – but the song they open with isn’t ‘Davidian’, the first track on ‘Burn My Eyes’. It quickly becomes apparent that the band will be playing a greatest hits setlist and finishing with the full album, which seems a strange choice given that everyone is more sober and energised now than they will be in two hours, but hey – it’s happening.

The Americans begin with ‘Imperium’, which has a 37 second intro of delicate sombre chords that serve perfectly for entrance music. After it drops, the first lyrics of the night are, “HEAR ME NOW!” roared by Flynn as heads bang and hair whips aggressively in time to the music.

As we all marvel in the fact that Machine Head have been releasing music for a quarter of a century, it’s simultaneously bittersweet when you look at the unfamiliar faces surrounding Flynn on stage. Bassist Jared MacEachern joined the group in 2013, whilst guitarist Waclaw Kieltyka and drummer Matt Alston were only drafted in this year as a double substitution. Some fans are pining for what could be considered the classic line-up – Adam Deuce, Dave McClain, and Phil Demmel. Like it or not, Machine Head is now Robb Flynn’s solo project.

Still, what they lack in original members, they make up for in heavy metal classics, burning through ‘Take My Scars’, ‘Now We Die’, ‘Struck A Nerve’, ‘Locust’, ‘I Am Hell’, and ‘Aesthetics of Hate’ under diamond shaped light fixtures, as the audience creates circle pit after circle pit upon Flynn’s command. The technical ability of each member is nothing to sniff at, either. Every musician performing is completely proficient and totally on the money of their respective craft. Flynn himself is pretty much a guitar virtuoso as he effortlessly shreds and holds his Flying V up to the people.

The vocalist then pauses and embarks on what becomes an eight minute speech, reminiscing about playing London for the first time in the very room we’re in back when Machine Head opened up for Slayer in 1994, dramatically strumming his guitar intermittently as he regales the memory. It’s almost Kanye West-esque, except that instead of preaching, the content of his monologue unites the room as he talks about his dependence on music, former drug use, shock at still being alive, friend recently being diagnosed with cancer, and summing up with how we can all be there for each other as a community.

On with the set, and ‘Darkness Within’, ‘Catharsis’, ‘From This Day’, and ‘Ten Ton Hammer’ and are unleashed. Everyone likes a good cover, and we’re happy to hear them take on ‘Hallowed Be Thy Name’ by the capital’s own Iron Maiden, before they finish up with ‘Halo’.

Flynn then announces that there will be a ten minute interval. Wow. The only other band that have been known to do this is Rush – but before anyone who wasn’t already at the bar can even grab a beverage, it’s finally time for the ‘Burn My Eyes’ portion of the evening, which reassuringly begins with ‘Davidian’.

It is simply incredible to enjoy such a comprehensive and now classic body of work performed in order of track listing in a live capacity; such a rare and welcomed treat has musos buzzing excitedly and pinching themselves as the material washes over them.

The foursome then blister through ‘Old’, ‘A Thousand Lies’, ‘Not But My Own’, and ‘The Rage to Overcome’ – but then, during ‘Death Church’, a drink is thrown, hitting the sound desk and bringing the show to its knees for a full 20 minutes. Flynn, understandably, isn’t happy,  explaining that the soundboard doesn’t drink beer and ordering the irritated mob to “knock the teeth into the back of the neck” of the person who’s responsible. It’s probably not a great idea, however, to follow that up with a joke about how we as a country can’t get our act together when it comes to Brexit – the one subject nobody at all wants to think about as we’re waiting to see if Machine Head can even continue.

The band eventually restart the set with ‘A Nation On Fire’ and go on to finish the record as intended, defying the curfew – it’s appreciated, but the night has certainly been marred by this incident as some have already left frustratedly in order to get their last trains home.

Sometimes less is more and a three hour – let alone three and a half hour – gig is far too long without ample warning, even though nobody can dare say that they didn’t get enough bang for their buck. On the bright side, though, Robb Flynn certainly isn’t exhibiting any signs of slowing down, and there’s a good chance that we’ll get to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of ‘Burn My Eyes’ – hopefully minus the soundboard and beer fiasco.

CHELSEA SMILE