Established rock stars are rarely brave enough to hit the university circuit with a new band and play an entire set of unfamiliar songs. Paul McCartney famously did it back in 1972: his fledgling outfit Wings had enough material to fill only a lunch-hour slot. Former Smiths guitarist Johnny Marr is now giving it a try, although unlike Macca, he has waited some 16 years to get his solo show on the road.
Marr strides on stage and unleashes from his guitar the mother of all hairy rock riffs. The song is Long Gone, and like many of the tracks from the new album, Boomslang, it seems designed to bludgeon listeners into submission. Marr strikes coolly understated guitar-hero poses as the groove intensifies, chewing gum and surveying his audience impassively. He may have made his name as one of the most subtle and sophisticated guitar players and arrangers this country has ever produced, but his intention now is to rock out like he has never rocked out before.
His band, the Healers, aid and abet him with single-minded determination. Drummer Zak Starkey (son of Ringo Starr) thunders away like a heavy rock drummer from the 1970s, while Alonza Bevan (formerly in Kula Shaker) lays down the kind of swampy funk bass lines that sometimes made his former band quite listenable. With no recourse to golden oldies, the group rely on sheer visceral power to win their audience over.
The music strays perilously close to rock cliche on several occasions, but there are just enough sly melodic twists to keep things interesting. Caught Up features the same descending guitar arpeggio as Paul Weller's Changing Man and ELO's 10538 Overture, but the eastern-inflected slide guitar solo tips the song into druggier territory. Down on the Corner hits higher peaks, boasting a gospel-tinged piano and one particularly masterful chord change. Of all the songs played tonight, this is the one that sounds as if it belongs on a greatest hits album.
Marr's singing voice contains distant, diluted echoes of other vocalists: a sardonic touch of Gallagher here, a bit of blissed-out Gillespie there. But the vocals (and the banal lyrics) are clearly meant to play second fiddle to that big, snarling guitar. Denied the thrill of hearing long-familiar tunes, the crowd are happy enough, but less than half seem bothered about an encore. For Marr, the uphill struggle starts here.
· At the Academy, Birmingham, on Sunday. Box office: 0121-262 3000. Then touring.
