Jesse Malin
THE BORDERLINE, LONDON
TUESDAY JANUARY 21 2003
"Just wait til see you me with my fuckin' band, man," Jesse Malin had said backstage at the Royal Festival Hall, after opening solo and acoustic for Ryan Adams last November. And he wasn't kidding.
He's flanked by two razor-sharp dudes who look like they walked out of a remake of West Side Story, but turn out to be bassist Johnny Pisano and guitarist Johnny Rocket. It may just be a trick of the light, but keyboardist Joe McGinty is sporting what looks suspiciously like a black eye.
By the early-to-mid '80s, Nico was holed up in Manchester on the comeback trail junkie habit in tow. A live performance at the Library Theatre, Heroine is a funereal study of stark cool, drawing on The Velvet Underground—"All Tomorrow's Parties", "Femme Fatale"—alongside rather less celebrated fare from Camera Obscura (1985) and Drama Of Exile (1981).
The inferior An Underground Experience places her in a nameless club—haunted, drawn and distant.
