As part of Rough Trade’s 50th anniversary curated series of events at the Southbank, Scritti Politti played two back-to-back shows for the first time since their last UK tour in 2022. The set list was quite similar to then but also included two songs not played live on that tour. Singer Green Gartside is the sole remaining member of the original lineup, performing largely from the band’s 1985 second and most commercially successful studio album, ‘Cupid and Psyche 85’.
They opened on ‘The Sweetest Girl’ and the funk track ‘Small Talk’, the latter with sprinkles of synth keys, before their hit reggae single, ‘The Word Girl’, with walking guitar chords, their highest charting release which reached number 6 in the UK charts – the second part of the song was fabulously dubbed out. Gartside explained how these 1985 songs were released 45 years ago through Rough Trade via label founder Geoff Travis whom he owed much praise, and the last of which was written in the band’s Camden Town squat with synth maestro and former band member, David Gamson.
The band then played the sambary ‘Skank Bloc Bologna’, their communist themed first demo and single from 1978 that started Scritti’s journey almost half a century ago. After getting to grips with some technical bearings resulting in some expletives from Gartside – perhaps showing how rusty he is from live performance but with vocals which have not deteriorated in the slightest – there was a scratchy guitar intro to the hip-hop vibes of pop single ‘Perfect Way’, which had stripped down percussion and a keyboard solo streaked with Gartside’s twang guitar; a song also covered by Miles Davis.
Although the set list was methodically similar to previous ones, they included some rarities like the band’s hoppy 1982 fourth single, ‘Asylums in Jerusalem’, which had not been played since 2018. Gartside performed his single collaboration with Miles Davis, the soulful ‘Oh Patti (Don’t Feel Sorry for Loverboy)’, also singing the highs of ‘Brushed with Oil, Dusted with Powder’ which was no easy feat; fully dreamscape with a proggy guitar instrumental, it was simply transcendental. They ended their set predictably on the twinkling ‘80s magic of ‘Absolute’; the bossy undulations had an almost Kraftwerk edge, with them returning for an encore of ‘Petrococadollar’ from the band’s last studio album, ‘White Bread Black Beer’. Scritti Politti have a forthcoming new album due out on the Rough Trade label; its release date is currently not set but it’s likely more shows will manifest as this still-on-top-form band finds its way back into live performance again.
18/07/26: Scritti Politti @ Queen Elizabeth Hall, London.
Photos © Peter Mcdonnell Photography.
© Ayisha Khan.