Like a clichéd joke about London buses, this is the second time in 10 days that Doomsday Outlaw has been in the West Midlands, but frankly, anytime you see them is better than when you don’t. As you’d expect, this is a similar set to what they played with Jared James Nichols last week, but that doesn’t lessen its power.
For all the fun onstage, there’s a darkness about them, for example when they play the wonderful ballad “If This Is The End,” which, as ever, is dedicated to singer Phil Poole’s late dad. Indeed, he becomes visibly emotional, something anyone who has lost a parent too young can empathise with.
They’ve always been a brilliant band, as “Blues For A Phantom Limb” – from the pre-Poole days – proves, but “One More Sip,” which is preceded by a discussion about which is fancier between the singers’ boots and the bass player’s jacket (Indy, the four-stringer, stands behind me, and I can confirm it’s him), is a modern classic; this is no mere hyperbole.
“My Woman Comes On Strong,” another one from the new album, and “Bring You Pain” wrap things up, and surely this increased activity will win them more fans, but perhaps also convince Doomsday Outlaw of how good they are.
The Dust Coda have a lot in common with the support when you think about it.
Both have been marvellous for a long time, and both have a hardcore fanbase, and maybe both haven’t always toured as much as you’d have liked.
Where I’m going with this is right here: there is a parallel universe here that sees this gig in the big room instead of the smallest one right at the top.
It certainly deserves to be, and it would have been a “Thriller” (which blasts out of the tannoy before they come out).
Earlier this year, they released “Loco Paradise,” which gave them their second top 40 album, and it made up most of the set tonight. It’s clear watching singer John Drake just how proud they are of it, and well might they be too.
They open with “Rock N Roll Paradise” from it, and there are other brilliant moments too, not least “Come The Night,” which is both written about and dedicated to Taylor Hawkins. It’s the type of sweeping ambition that has always marked The Dust Coda out as something different.
With a decade together now, they’re comfortable, and the work from older albums like “Jimmy 2 Times” has a real confidence.
In the middle of the set, Drake plays solo (“The band has quit,” he jokes), and his “song of hope in awful times,” “The Streets,” is a real moment of reflection. When the band does return, to thunder through “Free All The Dancers,” it somehow only increases the power.
The Dust Coda is at its best when they’re performing songs that mean something, like “Call Out The Dogs,” which rages at the political “elite,” but they are also a damn fine rock band.
They prove it twice in the encore, first with “Edge Of The Knife,” a song that wasn’t on the new album but should have been, and the magnificent “Road To Hell.”
That opened “Loco Paradise” and closed the show here, and in doing so, it underlined that after a decade, The Dust Coda is still looking forward.
And if both of these bands are a little more under the radar than they deserve, that doesn’t stop them from dreaming.
