Everything is new

Who was that at Glastonbury with the exploding firework tits? Who was that at Glastonbury with the 50s pantie-girdle and precious little else? Who cares? Seen it all before. Who was that at Glastonbury with the hip-jiving music that sounded like Robert Smith snogging Brandon Flowers? Why, it was Jack Peñate, the best gig at the festival by far. Jack Peñate is 25 today, half my age, yet with considerably more than twice as much going for him. Jack Peñate was born in Blackheath, London, 1984, a few months after I stopped living there. But it was nothing to do with me. Jack Peñate is the grandson of Mervyn Peake, who wrote Gormenghast. My long lost friend, Mark Eason, liked Gormenghast, but I don’t know what he’d make of Jack Peñate. How can someone so sensitive and so talented share the same birthday as Joey Barton. No matter. For, Jack has the best body-jerk dancing style that I’ve seen since my long, lost friend, Max Jingoff, back in Bradford in the late 70s. For me, it’s great to discover that something new can be done with simple guitar, bass, drum and voice. I had thought that, when Japan moved the guitar out of the equation with their 1980 LP, Gentlemen Take Polaroids, that we were done with that particular stringed instrument (which looks so silly on girls – not that some of the girl-led bands at Glastonbury realised). Henceforth, I thought we’d be looking to keyboards and voice, or drum and bass. I was not wrong, though only half right. Robert Fripp has made the guitar sound like an orchestra playing in a cathedral. With everyone else it’s more or less a banjo. With Jack Peñate, everything is different. I know the guitar is there and it looks great round his neck, knocking against those hips. But the main instrument is the voice. I thought I’d heard it somewhere before and I have. Perhaps in a forest, or when killing an arab. Maybe Saturday night 10.15, sitting in the kitchen sink. But I know that everything will be alright. This is a guy who can write about anything because he can talk about death and dying. I haven’t been as excited about a singer-songwriter since the emergence of Elvis Costello. With Jack Peñate, everything is new. Out of the womb/And into the tomb. Indeed.

markgriffiths@idealconsulting.co.uk