LIVE REVIEW : THE NEW MENDICANTS AT THE LEXINGTON 10/07/2013

I think that you can qualify The New Mendicants as a "Supergroup". Their launch has been slightly more subdued than the fanfare that accompanied the debut of  "Blind Faith" some 44 years ago but Joe Pernice and Norman Blake's song-writing prowesses in their main outfits (Pernice Brothers and Teenage Fanclub) are the guarantee for a night of excellent music. 

Pernice and Blake started the band last year. Both moved to Toronto to live with their partners ("They married us, we didn't marry them" said Pernice during the gig). They had crossed paths before while touring in the UK but this new proximity meant that they developed a friendship that became "The New Mendicants". They started played gigs in Toronto last year followed by recording and a tour of Australia and New Zealand at the beginning of this year. So Far they have only released an EP to coincide with that tour (imaginatively titled "Australia 2013 E.P) but an LP is supposed to be released in the first half of 2014. 

I had caught Joe Pernice live last October in a small pub and had found him a fantastic performer with terrific in-between song banter but Blake's presence at his side gave him an extra boost on both fronts (performance and banter). The set-up for the gig was pretty sparse, just the two of them with their guitars and a glockenspiel. They introduced a couple of tunes from the forthcoming album explaining that many of the album were written to be used on the soundtrack of the movie "A Long Way Down" based on Nick Hornby's novel of the same name. Unfortunately they all the songs got rejected which means in Pernice's words that half of the album will be about "standing on top a building". These new snippets were interspersed with songs from their back catalogue. We got Teenage Fanclub b-sides, Scud Mountain Boys tracks, Zombies covers ("Butcher's tale", already played by Pernice at his gig last October)... Pernice was in fine form, recounting stories from attending an Hall and Oates gig in the mid-eighties in Boston (and telling that he had made up the whole story after finishing it). There was some really funny moments like when Blake messed up a glockenspiel part on one of Pernice's songs. Pernice retaliated by playing a wrong chord on purpose during the intro of "Baby Lee" while mouthing "fuck you" to Blake.

The audience was tremendously respectful, interacting with Pernice and Blake in-between songs but keeping religiously silent during the quieter numbers. The show was sold out and to adD to and already wonderful evening, Blake announced that straight after the tour he was going to Glasgow to continue work on the next Teenage Fanclub album.