For the as yet uninitiated, Miles Hunt has been playing solo acoustic gigs alongside his proper musical day job for many, many years now, and it’s one of those nights where as an audience member you know exactly what you are gonna get. There will be some solo stuff and songs from his other various musical projects, but the majority will be from THE most underrated band of the late 80’s/early 90’s era, that post Madchester, pre-grunge hinterland of indie, The Wonder Stuff, who for some unexplained reason that angers me every time I think about it are comparatively ignored these days, unlike other less talented bands of that era who somehow are overly venerated (hello the bloody Charlatans, bonjour the soddin’ Happy Mondays). Their back catalogue would stand up against anything of that era. The first three album run they had (The Eight-Legged Groove Machine, Hup, Never Loved Elvis) is one of the great opening salvos of the last century.
The man knows his audience; it’s a gloriously warm Sunday and we’ve all got work in the morning, so at 8 o’clock prompt he saunters onstage with a trademark can of Guinness in hand and picks up one of the guitars that are his only onstage accompaniments of the evening and starts the evening with a curveball, the lesser-spotted ‘Flapping On The Pier’, the closing track of his best solo (ish) albums, 2002’s The Miles Hunt Club, a majestic six-minute opus and a wonderful introduction to the night.
Miles Hunt tells us that his set tonight feels a bit all over the place as he’s very much in a Wonder Stuff state of mind (they played the 10th anniversary of the Shiiine On festival last weekend). And as if to prove it, he proceeds to play a trio of songs from their second album Hup, each interspersed with a story about the song, ranging from how he’s done with anniversary tours (they played Hup gigs at the end of last year) as they were full of songs he no longer cared about, to how Ned’s Atomic Dustbin ripped them off, as well as TWS ripping off Pop Will Eat Itself (must be a Stourbridge thing).
Like all great frontmen, Miles Hunt comes across as a great raconteur as well as a great vocalist and guitarist, with the very busy crowd here enraptured by these in-between tales as much as the songs themselves, even though there’s stories here that the most dedicated of us have heard told on many previous occasions, the only exception to this being ‘Circlesquare’ (“which shockingly has no story”).
There’s a duo of tracks from 2009’s album with Stuffies violinist Erica Nockalls, ‘Catching More Than We Miss’, which he’s happy to play to promote the now 15-year old record as the copies he has are “taking up room under the bed.”
Miles Hunt discusses the “cathartic” writing of his three books, all covering The Wonder Stuff’s glory days and adapted from his diaries at the time. It strikes me that this is a perfect room for this gig; it’s seated, the sound is excellent and the rarest thing of all, an attentive crowd. With no talking at any point during the songs, you can hear a pin drop. The first of his two 50-minute sets ends with ‘Here Comes Everyone’, the very pinnacle of his recorded output, which he dedicates to Ian Prowse – who’s in the crowd tonight – and then it’s interval time.
Part two begins with something a bit more recent, ‘The Guy With The Gift’, from Miles Hunt’s last TWS record (so far), Better Be Lucky, before there’s an almost lounge version of one of their biggest hits ‘On The Ropes.’ It’s noticeable that there is less of his own solo songs (especially his earlier records) than usual, instead he is focusing on different career eras.
And with that in mind, we get ‘Fits And Starts’ from Hunt’s loud, shoutier 1996 project Vent 414‘s only album. But only album soon to be no more as he informs us that their second album is due for release next year, a mere 30 years after the debut. Excitingly, that’s not all, Vent 414 are also to return to the live arena this December with a run of dates…supporting The Wonder Stuff. And the crowd reaction to that announcement is one of great excitement, to say the very least.
As a final good deed, Hunt spends the last 20 minutes of the set just banging out Wonder Stuff hit after hit, so we are treated (and it is a treat) to ‘A Wish Away’, ‘Don’t Let Me Down, Gently’, the much-maligned top 5 botherer ‘The Size Of A Cow‘, a riotous singalong on ‘Golden Green‘, ending on ‘Give, Give, Give Me More, More, More’ before a standing ovation sends him away for the evening.
It’s just shy of two hours in total, with no lulls or dips, and we could have sat there for another two hours more. It’s a difficult trick being an unsung national treasure, but Miles Hunt fits that description perfectly.
(Photo: Cheryl Doherty)
