THOMAS DOLBY @ O2 ACADEMY ISLINGTON, LONDON

Squeezing in an extra London date for the last night of his UK tour, Thomas Dolby made a rare appearance in Islington for his first UK headline shows in over a decade, a place he said he has played the most in the UK and where he also roadied for The Fall back in the day. The previous night he had performed the same set list at a sold out date at O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire.

He began his set on his cover of New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’, for which he sang vocals and included a flash sample of his own hit song ‘She Blinded Me with Science’. His set was mostly taken from his acclaimed studio album, ‘The Golden Age of Wireless’, which, following the spectacular track ‘Evil Twin Brother’, he opened on ‘Europa and the Pirate Twins’, featuring its Ultravox synth mid-section; impressively, he played all keyboard/synth parts and laid out his drum sequencing live. He moved onto ‘One of Our Submarines’ from the same album, a song he said was about his uncle who drowned in a submarine in World War II; its echoes and sonar sound effects were oddly mixed with Gary Numan’s ‘Cars’ and vocals of Duran Duran’s ‘Say a Prayer’; the song was hauntingly tragic.

Dolby then performed a duet with singer and musician Jason Mraz, who appeared digitally behind him on visuals with pre-recorded vocals singing ‘My Brain is Like a Sieve’ from Dolby’s 1988 ‘Aliens Ate My Buick’ album and glided into the percussive beats and classical piano of the David Bowie influenced ‘Budapest by Blimp’ from the same album. He paid tribute to his influence in his cover of ‘Heroes’, in which he remembered meeting him at Battersea Power Station despite the slightly cheesy visuals showing his performance at Live Aid. But this aside, Dolby’s guitar-based synthesiser accompaniment to the song was brilliant. He ended his set on the oriental funk of ‘Spice Train’ (also including George Clinton’s ‘Hot Sauce’ in the encore) and returned to ‘The Golden Age of Wireless’ with his 1982 single ‘She Blinded Me with Science’, complete with live “science” sample mixing. Unfortunately, ‘Airwaves’, one of his best tracks from the same album, was a half-hearted effort on which he ended the show.

24/08/24: Thomas Dolby @ O2 Academy Islington, London.