Current 93 / Nurse With Wound (live at The Shepherds Bush Empire)

London
13 October 2018

Hallowe’en is just around the corner, and as the holy month of Spooptober gets underway, what better time could there be for that most festive of tipples, a Nurse With Wound / Current 93 cocktail? And that’s just what’s being served at Shepherds Bush Empire tonight, albeit with a VERY early curfew, no doubt due to that awful urban phenomenon of people moving in near a famous venue and then complaining when it continues to host live music.

And it’s a shame, because if there’s one criticism I’d level at Nurse With Wound tonight it’s that they don’t play for long enough. They bathe us in sound, and when it finishes it’s like having to get out of a nice hot tub of water to answer the phone. But while they’re with us they’re great, Steve Stapleton and chums taunting, coaxing and occasionally beating unearthly and sometimes terrifying sounds from a variety of boxes, instruments and objects — occasionally even including guitars.

Just as intense when they’re being subtle as they are when they’re hammering you with pulsating, organic beats that make you feel like you’re trapped inside someone else’s body, it’s like a noise gig where volume is optional. Although there’s plenty of that when they choose to crank it up too.

And what to expect from Current 93? I haven’t a Scooby, to be honest. The new album, The Light Is Leaving Us All, is on sale for the first time at the merch stall downstairs, so who knows what we’re gonna get?

Well, I certainly wasn’t expecting an intro tape that starts with Chitty Chitty Bang Bang‘s “Hushabye Mountain” and then segues, by way of the “DUN-DUN-DUNNNN” fanfare from Geoff Wayne‘s The War Of The Worlds into a gradually-decaying “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep”, then ends in a squall of noise as the band take the stage. No, I really wasn’t expecting that at all.

The last couple of times I’ve seen Current 93 they’ve been wonderfully chaotic, a barely-contained post-rock swirl that almost drowns David Tibet‘s frantic musings. That is not what we get tonight, as they play The Light Is Leaving Us All from end to end, with title cards for each track making them seem more like chapters than songs. This iteration of Current 93 are super-tight and super-intimate, and this provides a backdrop for Tibet to give us his most coherently and consistently sad work since the classic Of Ruine Or Some Blazing Starre.

Looking more like an old-timey lighthouse keeper than a Buddhist Noddy these days, Tibet weaves a folk horror tale of pastoral apocalypse, an Under Milk Wood for the end of days. Death, loss and the singing of birds are the recurring themes tonight, all of which casts “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep”‘s avian chorus and questions about missing parents in a darker, more thoughtful light. The piano-led tunes put me in mind of a more complex Soft Black Stars, while the general ambience is all reminiscent of Of Ruine Or Some Blazing Starre or Sleep Has His House. This is Current 93 at their saddest and most beautiful.

And then they encore with some of their other saddest material: “All The World Makes Great Blood”, “Niemandswasser”, “Sleep Has His House” … and then, oh yes, a beautifully-reworked “Hushabye Mountain” to close.

In what’s been a tough few months for me in real life, tonight, along with The The at the Royal Albert Hall earlier in the summer, has been one of the saddest and most joyful nights of the year. Certainly the most cathartic. The light may be leaving us all, but like Leonard Cohen before him, David Tibet has left a crack for what remains to get in.

-Words: Justin Farrington-
-Pictures: Dave Pettit-