Mott the Hoople played the Orpheum – 4/9
U.K. glam icons Mott the Hoople hit Boston’s Orpheum last week as part of their first U.S. tour in 45 years, joined by Paisley Underground vets The Dream Syndicate.
Frontman Ian Hunter opened last Tuesday’s Mott the Hoople show with a stripped-back snippet of Don McLean’s for-better-or-worse immortal “American Pie,” culminating with its sentimental “the day the music died” refrain but punctuated by Hunter positing, tongue in cheek, “…or did it?” Hardly a subtle way to open a tour so self-consciously nostalgic as to be dubbed “Mott the Hoople ’74,” but ultimately one in keeping with the evening’s refreshingly less-than-reverent tone.
Hunter – joined by circa-’74 members Ariel Bender on guitar and Morgan Fisher on keys – led the band through a boisterous set touching on much of Mott’s classic-era output. David Bowie may have been responsible for their best-known tune stateside, but the roots-glam of 1973’s Mott and the following year’s The Hoople – the main focal points here – showcased plenty of shoulda-been hits with less of an Aladdin Sane b-side sheen than the omnipresent “All the Young Dudes.”
Naturally it was that song – still an anthemic touchstone in its own right – that closed the night’s encore, but highlights abounded elsewhere in a loose and playful set featuring certified jams like “Roll Away the Stone” and a lengthy main set-ending covers mashup (I’ll let setlist.fm field that one).
The eight-piece crew on stage occasionally sounded too shambolic for its own good, but largely hewed to a successful formula that situated a spirited Hunter as its bedrock with the more theatrically-minded Bender and champagne-spraying Fisher as his foils. It was clear that no one on stage was treating the proceedings with any deadly seriousness, and that was a boon to the whole endeavor.
“Six bucks right?” Hunter cracked to the balcony seats toward the end of the set, in a self-deprecating acknowledgement of the deep-discount tickets that had reportedly popped up on resale sites elsewhere on the tour. Scalpers and the disinterested be damned – it was a show worth more than that.
Hell, a Dream Syndicate set should’ve justified the face-value price of admission alone. Steve Wynn’s reunited jangle-garage-psych quartet – whose second post-reactivation LP These Times drops in May – recalled opening for R.E.M. on that very stage decades prior as they ripped through a short but impactful set. The Dream Syndicate’s inspired melodic turns and Velvets-gone-psych guitar workouts have always been deserving of a wider audience – and a better one than the cavernous Orpheum and its early-arrival Mott devotees – but Wynn and company triumphed under the circumstances. I can’t recommend catching them in a proper club setting highly enough.
Check out photos from both sets below.
