Hugh Cornwall @ The Gov, Adelaide 5/5/2019
Hugh Cornwall is the renowned vocalist and guitarist of The Stranglers who had twenty three top forty singles and seventeen top forty albums in the UK hit The Gov for one Monster show. Cornwall has pursued a successful solo career since leaving The Stranglers 1990 still making new music in the twilight of his career and this tour is all about his new album Monster.
Being a Sunday night and a bit cooler might of scared a few off but the mood was buoyant with the Adelaide Crows having a win and the Adelaide Reds playing to a win a few blocks over. The show was divided in to two parts with the first being focused on Cornwall’s solo music and returning for a second set giving fans a taste of the hits from The Stranglers. No supports either!
The sound was top shelf, the band were tight and Cornwall sounded fantastic. Opening with Pure Evel off his new album followed by Leave Me Alone and I Want One Of Those showing that he still has plenty of song writing smarts since leaving The Stranglers. Cornwall requested a translator as fans yelled over the top of each other requesting their favourite song.
Monster was inspired by special effects genius Ray Harryhausen and if he never had met George Lucas he would have never entered the world of film. As Cornwall suggested he thought he should have a song about him. After Stuck In Daily Mail Land Cornwall asked the question whether there was a Bank Holiday tomorrow. The song dedications continued after Pure Evel (dedicated to Evel Knievel), The Most Beautiful Girl In Hollywood (dedicated to Hedy Lamarr who was the first woman to take her clothes off in film) to Arthur Lee from the band Love when he got sent to prison (The Prison’s Going Down) to watch Cornwall said he would be laughing down on us. The first set finished with some awesome tunes including Black Hair Black Eyes Black Suit, Mothra and Duce Coochie Man.
After a short break the band returned launching straight in to Nuclear Device (The Wizard Of Aus). There wasn’t a lot of interaction from Cornwall as he mentioned later that he was losing his voice so it was perfectly understandable that the music did all the talking. Who could argue with the calibre of Golden Brown, Skin Deep, No More Heroes and Duchess. Cornwall promised that after the show he would sign anything put in front of him and jokingly quipped “just flesh, no vinyl”. With two songs to go Cornwall asked the crowd whether they had enough of The Stranglers songs referring to it as “death by Stranglers and are you still steady on your feet, have the ambulance on standby if your ill”. Cornwall said at this point they would go off for a cup of tea and return for an encore but losing his voice they played two more fine tunes by way of Hanging Around and Tank. For die hard fans or new fans it was a solid fill of music by one of the greats.
Live Review By Rob Lyon