GARY NUMAN + New Skin @ Le National

By Lisa S - Unsystem-Addict - 08/05/2006

Regarding the venue -- I'd never previously been to Le National and I must say this was one of the best things about the Gary Numan show for me. I like that the floor is on a slope, so you can see the stage well over the crowd anywhere you happen to stand. However, this feature was not necessarily necessary for the Numan show in particular, as there were far less people there than I had expected. That said, it was not packed at all and everyone had lots of room to themselves to move about as they pleased, though despite the room not many people were really dancing.

The Numan crowd was entirely unthreatening; I had been concerned about going alone to such a 'goth' show, because goths tend to travel in pairs or groups -- because when you're that much of an insecure outcast, you can use all the social support you can get. However, my concern was unfounded, as there were few to no hardcore, judgmental or pretentious goths there. In fact, being at the show reminded me of the age-old fate of most goths, which involves having to severely normal out at some point in their lives; this was made painfully apparent by those present at the Numan show, especially in comparison to the sparse dressed-to-the-nines fans (mostly younger) that were there.

On the openers -- I arrived at the show for 9pm, and things started right on time. The opening act New Skin played until 9:30, and the 30 minutes couldn't have gone by slower in my opinion. All the songs sounded too similar and there wasn't a singular moment worth noting in their entire set. They announced that they have an album coming out soon and no doubt this has to do with the current trend of pseudo-gothic scenesterism. New Skin couldn't look, let alone sound, stylish or serious about songwriting. In my notes I referred to them as somewhat contrived goth-rock that didn't really rock, at its worst. There was nothing to write home about other than the girl had a British accent. This may sound harsh -- and I suppose it doesn't help that the lead singer looked just like this particularly evil girl I knew in high school -- but I had also gotten my hopes up that Numan might have acquired some really great up-and-coming industrial or synth pop outfit from the UK for his Jagged tour, but alas, twas not to be so.

As for Numan's performance itself -- the best thing about his performance was no doubt the fact that he was not at all hindered by the fact that he's grown rather old and less in-shape than in the past. I must note this, because I also saw Depeche Mode recently and must say that Dave Gahan is in prime tip-top sexy-shape, as if the 80's never ended and his body remains in peak form. Gary Numan performed in a youthful manner also; his moves were confident and serious, despite the fact I found myself almost cracking up several times. And no, it wasn't me laughing at him for getting wrinkly and gaining a belly, it was me laughing because he was so expressive and I thought it was amazing how into his 'stage persona' he was, regardless of his altered physical state. What was most amusing in particular was that he was making monster faces and gestures, lurching around on the stage in a serious manner, dancing in some weird 80's goth ways -- which somehow managed to work for him. Some of his moves were quite akin to his old-school moves, as I had been watching some live footage of his performances in the 80's. However, in his youth these faces and gestures were more robotic, and the creepiness was tinged with a strong sexual energy. This didn't translate to Numan on stage in the now, but I was quite pleased with him for trying to stick with his strange suave movements from before, whether they came out distorted or not.

The other reason I felt the need to look at some older footage of Numan's performances was that some of his moves on stage were severely Trent-Reznor-ized: taking a stance, grabbing the mic and leaning into it agressively. I wanted to get to the bottom of things and see if Numan's moves were his own that Trent Reznor had been influenced by, or if Numan had lifted them from the contemporary Reznor himself -- which seems to indeed be the case. Numan of course has admitted to being influnced by Nine Inch Nails, and to being flattered that Reznor has much respect for his work. He would have to admit this after working with an ex-NIN drummer and producing an album that could very easily be mistaken for a NIN side project.

This would bring me to the one complaint I had about the show: the majority of the set was comprised of Numan's latest album Jagged. I would have to say that I was pleasantly surprised when I first gave the album a listen. However, it is hard to get past the fact that it sounds almost exactly like Nine Inch Nails, save for Numan's vocals, which may I add are filtered in ways they haven't been previously to sound more NIN-esque. I had a feeling that Numan would be alternating between songs off the new album and his older works. However, he ended up playing far more new songs, and it got confusing while doing this review because they allllllll sounded exactly the same(!). To my surprise, much of the crowd was quite-quite into the new songs, and from this I could only conclude that as odd as it sounds, perhaps some of these older Gary Numan fans have never really heard any Nine Inch Nails or developing industrial-esque music in the past 10 years. I concluded this, because if I hadn't ever heard The Fragile, I would have been really impressed with Numan's Jagged songs as well.

Show highlights for me included:

• Seeing an older industrialist Numan still give it his all with no shame.
• The neato dot matrix-like bars of light displays -- very retro. The Strokes had the same lights on their tour, but Numan was using more Nine Inch Nail-esque colour schemes: turquoise and white and such.
• It was great when Numan played "Metal", "Down In The Park", "Are Friends Electric" and "Cars". These songs sounded so great in fact, I really wish he'd played more of the oldies (does that make me a jerk?). Personally I would have loved to have heard "Me! I Disconnect From You", "I Die... You Die", and "We Take Mystery To Bed".

Kudos to artists that made great music in the 80's still giving it their all, making new music and world-touring. Retro may be over, but it sure as heck isn't dead.

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