Blurt at the 100 Club, London, UK on 19th of may 2024
Where do you end up if you squeeze between
the front doors of an Ann Summers store and
a Miniso gift shop in Central London? The
answer is not Diagon Alley but the similarly
anachronistic 100 Club, on a warm evening
in May playing host to post-punk trio Blurt,
bathed in a dull red light and surrounded by a
small but devoted audience.
However, all may not be what it seems:
frontman Ted Milton, sporting a suit and his
trademark cartoonish white quiff, introduces
himself and his bandmates as “a Blurt tribute
band”, apologising as he faffs about with a
small notebook that “we haven’t rehearsed
very much, so I have to use the autoprompt”.
A bit later, as he struggles to adjust a mic
stand, he bemoans “all this technology” as
“so complicated”. Fans will recognise a strain
of absurdist humour, the knowing playfulness
around the band’s unlikely persistence. In
2008, they were describing their then tour as
“the last Last tour”; that was 16 years ago. In
a 1986 review, NME described Milton as “the
funniest ol’ timer you ever did see”. That was
nearly 40 years ago.
So has much changed? The short answer
is no. Milton still has a wild glint in his eye,
a commanding way of looking round at his
audience as he speak-sings into the mic that
betrays his theatrical background. You get
the sense he’s imploring everyone to listen to
something simultaneously bonkers and very
important. You can’t often hear what that is,
given the volume of the drums, but the mad
drama of it isn’t lost.
Aside from a few words at the beginning
and end, Milton barely ever breaks the fourth
wall: there’s no direct address to the audience,
nothing so pedestrian as the introduction
of songs. Instead, what I can make out from
his stage patter is the odd image delivered like
a missive from a hitherto unexplored planet:
“Inside every cloud there’s a silver-plated Uzi,”
for instance, which introduces 2022’s “Uzi”.
The setlist draws from across the catalogue
but more heavily from recent albums, 2015’s
Beneath Discordant Skies and 2010’s Cut It!.
That said, Milton brings the gig to a close
by reminding his audience that “we are a Blurt
tribute band” who will now “dare to reprise one
of their earlier songs”. Full-throttle renditions
of “‘The Fish Needs A Bike” and “Cherry
Blossom Polish” ensue.
Milton’s disinclination to act the
conventional frontman reinforces the slightly
hypnotic, unearthly experience that is a Blurt
gig. All those relentless, Fela Kuti-like rhythms
clattered out at ear-splitting volume by
Dave Aylward; Steve Eagles’s heavily distorted
guitar that shimmers and buzzes, swooping
like an air raid siren one moment and a
flickering with heady riffs the next. Milton’s
skronky sax lifts the whole thing to something
approaching bacchic frenzy. The lack of a
bass means the textures are all surface level,
but the surface becomes so loud and tightly
wrought that the impression is all consuming.
Not bad for a tribute band – and it’ll be
interesting how they regenerate for their next
tour, if there is one. “Always different but
always the same,” said John Peel of The Fall,
and the same is true for Blurt.
Lucy Thraves