CONCERT REVIEW: Ian Hunter and the Rant Band @ World Café Live, 9/13

After having been the frontman of Mott The Hoople throughout the early '70s and a solo act ever since, the curly-haired Hunter knows how to reach his cult, the likes of which nearly sold out World Café Live on Thursday night.

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CONCERT REVIEW: Ian Hunter and the Rant Band @ World Café Live, 9/13

POSTED: Friday, September 14, 2012, 12:00 PM

Filed Under: Music Concert Review

I don’t want to seem blasphemous by stating that Ian Hunter died for the sins of glam kids and punks that followed in his wake. Rousing versions of David Bowie and Lou Reed songs (“All the Young Dudes,” “Sweet Jane”) and a self-penned roughneck sound with cuttingly cynical lyrics that gave The Clash their inspired spark doesn’t make you a god. It does, however, make you a prophet or a harbinger or a guy good with a rant or forty.

After having been the smartly caustic (yet warmly emotional) frontman of Mott The Hoople throughout the early '70s and an equally smarmy disarmingly tender solo act ever since, the curly-haired (still, at 72) Hunter knows how to reach his cult, the likes of which nearly sold out (only one ticket remained!) World Café Live on Thursday night.

Give them the aforementioned anthemic crowd pleasers. Throw in a brace of songs from his powerfully noisy and easily brilliant Mott-like new album with his Rant Band, When I’m President, like its wispy title track and the toughly tumbling “Comfortable (Flyin’ Scotsman).” Make certain the big hits, such as the rugged “Once Bitten, Twice Shy,” get their due. Then concentrate on the cherished rarities from your catalog Mott-old such as the poignant “I Wish I Was Your Mother” (one of the few songs ever to actually make great use of a mandolin without sounding like a fucking jig), the Broadway-ish boogie of “Roll Away the Stone,” and “Saturday Gigs,” glam rock’s last true glorious hymn and Mott’s final British single. From his worthy earthy solo oeuvre, the energetic glitter-pub-rock Rant Band helped a raspy Hunter turn “All American Alien Boy” into a racing, rhythmic soliloquy of distanced respect for his adopted land, made “Just Another Night” as rollicking as WCL’s floors could handle and indelicately placed lighting in a bottle by butt-ending his own disconsolate gospel-tinged epic “What For” with John Lennon’s ever-despairing “Isolation.”

Long time Philly fans (Mott the Hooples made their American bones with gigs at Philly’s Tower Theater between 1972 and '73) might have bitched that he didn’t do the likes of “Golden Age of Rock 'n’ Roll” and top 40 fanatics could have griped that Hunter didn’t play “Cleveland Rocks.” But if he’s going to keep playing hard fast and loose at this age, he’ll surely get around to them next time.

(a_amorosi@citypaper.net) (@adamorosi)

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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