John Squire
ICA, London
2 / 5
John Squire was cut from an artier piece of denim than his scally mates in the Stone Roses, and the differences are just as marked now. Yet Squire the solo act, here coinciding with an exhibition of his artwork, lacks that attraction of opposites that gave the Roses their special devil's dust.
Though he's been running his own show for years, it's not entirely clear what he has to offer as a frontperson. Were he John Bloggs, touting his surprisingly uncharismatic self around the bars, he'd be lucky to land the opening slot of the NME tour. Proving it, he played nine unfamiliar songs from Marshall's House, and saw his audience shift gear from the air-punching rapture that greeted his entrance to laconic nodding. It's not enough simply to be a jobbing icon, as Johnny Marr and Bernard Butler have similarly discovered. Squire's generic songs of love and revenge, even sung in a more distinctive voice than his, would still have sounded like the hidden 14th track on an Ash album.
Toward the end, he excavated a handful of Roses songs to the expected frenzy, and it was during these - especially a funking nasty Fool's Gold and Tightrope, reshaped from fireside ballad to sensual swayalong - that he rose to the occasion.
Done up in leather like Lou Reed's prettier son, and hidden under that same cascading hairdo, he was suddenly the Madchester guitar god, and the temperature rose by about 20 degrees. But it took 90 minutes to reach that point - when he finally japed, after Sugar Spun Sister, "Fuck off home," the invitation was about half an hour overdue.
Caroline Sullivan
John Squire's artwork is on display at the ICA from Saturday until Monday.
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