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Grace Petrie & The Benefits Culture, St Pancras Old Church, London NW1
5/5
Recording a live album and DVD in front of a small audience, Sheffield-based folksinger Grace Petrie and her band make this a very special night indeed.
Opening with Deliver Us From Evil, her brilliant satire on the Church of England’s very un-Christian investment in dodgy moneylender Wonga, Petrie quips that performing the song in this house of God may mean she is struck down by lightning.
The jokes continue throughout the evening, suggesting that Petrie has a bright future in stand-up should her music career go belly-up.
That’s unlikely, considering the quality of her last three albums, each chock-full of generation-defining love songs and lefty political broadsides.
The bouncy, Bob Dylan-referencing Protest Singer Blues is soon followed by the Othello-influenced heartbreak of Iago. Introducing the uplifting I Climbed A Mountain Petrie self-deprecatingly explains how she is a “self-centred twat” because she came up with the overblown title after being dumped.
Time-travelling between the 1930s fight against fascism to present-day dissent, the widescreen They Shall Not Pass would be any other artist’s big song.
Yet for the talented and prolific Petrie it’s just one anthem among many — from the anti-coalition, gay rights sing-along Farewell to Welfare to Inspector Morse, a two fingers up to soul-destroying jobs. “Be strong, be resilient, be young, be fucking brilliant!” goes the song’s crowd-pleasing expletive refrain.
What’s most impressive is the fact Petrie plays for around 90 minutes but I can still think of several brilliant songs that weren’t given an airing.
Mention should also go to the impressive line-up of The Benefits Culture — percussionist Jess Greengrass, bassist Caitlin Field and violinist Caitlin Shaw, who plays a mean fiddle on the austerity-era rock-out The Redundancy Hymn.
If the Morning Star had a house band, Grace Petrie & The Benefits Culture would be it.
Grace Petrie and The Benefits Culture play the Belgrave Music Hall in Leeds on November 14, details: belgravemusichall.com
