Peter Doherty

Peter Doherty, Oxford O2 Academy, May 6th.

Doherty watchers will be pleased to hear he looked healthy enough last night but it would hardly have mattered if the nation's second favourite drug taker had been groggy. All he really needs to do is play the opening chords of a song or sing the first line and his devoted followers are happy to do the rest for him. This was less a musical recital than a gathering of the faithful for a mass karaoke or community singing.
In a greatest hits selection covering Libertine, Babyshamble and solo material, the most treasured items are celebrated with word perfect congregational joining in as well as arm-waving and beer slinging. You'll have to excuse me but it's a few years now since I went to any concert where you didn't sit on a chair to listen and even then the more recent of them were more sedate affairs than this.
But, in fact, despite the allegiance on the other side of idolatry exhibited by these hardcore adherents, the quieter moments exposed a high level of chat and natter going on in the audience who were clearly not as rapt in attention in the more boring bits - bits made only fractionally more interesting by two girls doing a bad impression of ballet dancers with their parodies of pirouettes and daft dying swans.
Doherty's set, though, is an impressive mix of jaunty attitudes, nostalgic anthems to friendship and good times and slightly rambling, fey sensitivity. They are informed by a sound understanding of pop tradition and he's wise and talented enough to follow in an English lineage of songwriting whimsicality as well as wordplay. Without the involvement of the crowd, you wonder if the set would have been as easily sustainable with only acoustic guitar accompaniment but the venue here was small enough not to need a band to fill it.
Although I thought the support act, Lipstick Melodies, were derivative, old-fashioned and nothing special, the first support, the Law Abiding Citizens, were not bad at all - seemingly owing some debt to the Libertines but impressive in their succinct but neat and tidy set and it worked for me.
I'd all but forgotten that this sort of gig still went on, quite honestly. I thought it was all arenas and festivals now. It reminded me of so many such events in the 1970's and it has changed very little. But if I ever belonged there, I don't any more. I can't make myself a part of this atmosphere of excitement and adulation and I would prefer to hear the performance I paid for rather than the devotions of the converted. But that's the hardcore for you. I'm mostly more sceptical than that.