REVIEW: B DOLAN AT BRISTOL FLEECE (15/09/11)
One year ago, almost to the night, to be inside The Fleece was to be part of a sweaty, emotional, almost reverential experience as a beyond-capacity crowd bid farewell to one of the legends of intelligent, anti-establishment hip-hop Sage Francis, as he hung up his touring cape. Rhode Island’s B Dolan, Sage’s best friend, Strange Famous label-mate and man most likely to take on the baton, provided support that night with a short, intense display of thought-provoking polemics delivered at machine-gun pace.
Tonight, Dolan’s back on his first headline tour of the UK, backed by UK beat-makers Dan Le Sac and Buddy Peace, but you can almost hear the transatlantic tumbleweed blowing through the venue as our hero steps up to take up the mantle of SFR’s touring standard bearer; a small core of devoted followers hug the stage and a sparse gathering of curious observers lurk in the shadows. With Le Sac and Peace onboard, most of the material is re-worked and almost unrecognisable from the album versions ¬– perhaps disorientating, but indicative of an artist unafraid to challenge his work and unwilling to rest in a creative rut.
Dolan leans heavily on 2010 masterpiece Fallen House, Sunken City. ‘Earthmovers’, spitting bile at America’s endless conflict and reconstruction cycle, is re-cut – low down and dubby, with new words book-ending its “Come to Jamaica, come to Dubai” chorus. Turning his guns on the banks, ‘Economy Of Words’ is dedicated to “everyone who’s skint”, and is powered along by a deep, undulating groove before being directed through a brief take on Dire Straits’ ‘Money For Nothing’ and into a stirring, breathless double-time mid-section.
The back half of the crowd only start to move once Dolan’s mash-up of ‘50 Ways To Bleed Your Customer’ and M.I.A’s ‘Paper Planes’ arrives, the bald-headed rapper removing his grubby cream suit jacket to reveal a noose fastened around his neck and quipping “Bristol, you showed up”. ‘Leaving New York’ is given a dramatic re-working by Le Sac and Peace, embellished with a piano arpeggio and post-rock overtones, and ‘Joan Of Arcadia’ sounds even more spooky and ethereal thanks to their haunting, hymnal contributions.
The old Southern states union standard, ‘Which Side Are You On?’ is woven into a new song, which sees Dolan raging at homophobic and bigoted MCs and promoters before ‘House Of Bees’, with its incessant, pounding backbeat keeps up the attack on the music business. ‘Heart Failure’ is slowed down and imbued with post-apocalyptic gloom, a clearly-disappointed Dolan sighing “dying crowd” at its conclusion before resuming his assault on an industry with the blood of many departed artists on its hands via a stirring spoken-word piece about the ODB – ‘Who Killed Russell Jones?’ Late Fleece performers past Amy Winehouse and Jeff Buckley look down approvingly from their posters above the bar.
The production duo leave the stage for the dark and emotionally intensive ‘Marvin’, performed faithfully to the album version and the evening’s high point, reaching a towering crescendo as the story of Marvin Gaye’s murder by his own father comes to its tragic conclusion. A needless heckler is dealt with in fairly brutal fashion before an encore including ‘Kitchen Sink’, ‘Heart Failure’ and ‘One Breath Left’. Tonight’s evidence showcases a performance poet, lyricist, formidable rapper, tireless activist and fitting figure to build on the foundations laid by Francis and Strange Famous over the past 15 years. Bristol missed out. Dolan tells me afterwards: “Everywhere else on the tour has been dope.” Go figure.
Words: Gary Walker
