Adam Ant
Poussez Posse
Indig02, London
Thursday May 26 2011

Comebacks are tricky things to pull off at the best of times. And for Adam Ant, now scrabblling back up the showbiz ladder after an uncomfortably public descent that culminated in a well-publicised spell in a psychiatric hospital, things are trickier still. He's surely got more to prove than most.

Not least because, as a bona fide star with a trail of hits behind him, the heights Adam has to re-conquer are that much higher. But also because the comeback campaign itself has had some distinctly erratic moments so far.

His previous stint on the gig circuit - the 'World Tour of London', essentially a flurry of gigs in small clubs, presumably to re-establish Adam as an artist unafraid to engage with the sharp end of things - ended up as a glorious example of how to engineer a PR disaster, thanks to eye-watering ticket prices that effectively slammed the doors on loyal Ant fans who'd supported their hero through thick and thin.

£75 - that's not a typo: £75 - for a gig at the 200-capacity Madame Jojo's is well into the having-a-laugh zone whoever the artist might be. If the intention was to create an air of exclusivity, well, I suppose it worked. By all accounts, hardly anybody turned up. I certainly didn't.

But tonight, things are different. For a start, the ticket price is a far more sensible twenty-odd quid, and Indig02 is a much more appropriate venue - once you get over the location, within the corporate-overkill surroundings of the ex-Millenium Dome. Once inside the dome, we find a purpose-built theatre-style rock venue with good sightlines, killer PA and - glory be! - decent stage lighting. And once inside this venue, we find Adam Ant.

But we don't find him just yet. First, we're treated to a support set from Poussez Posse - an all-girl glam band signed to Adam Ant's own record label, apparently. If I sound a little doubtful here it's because the band seem to have virtually zero web presence, and never seem to play live except when they're supporting Adam Ant. I can't help wondering if Poussez Posse are a genuine band with any sort of independent existence, or whether they're merely some sort of side project by proxy on the part of Adam himself.

Tonight they seem rather hesitant, the musicians diffidently taking care of business and leaving all that pesky audience engagement stuff to their singer. Who, it must be said, starts with a slight advantage in that she's Georgina Baillie, of the Russell Brand-related voicemail scandal a couple of years back.

The dust might've settled from that now, doubtless to the relief of all parties, but it still gives her a heightened recognition factor. That's got to be useful for publicity purposes. What the hell, you've got to take your advantages where you can get 'em in the crazy old world of rock 'n' roll.

But even Georgina is rather more restrained than we might expect from a former member of a burlesque troupe called Satanic Sluts. She hollers her way through the songs with more volume than finesse, but never really vamps it up or gives it much showbiz.

The band knock out a cover of The Runaways' 'I Love Playing With Fire', just so we know where they're coming from, and it's not bad, you understand. But the world is full of glam bands who can really turn on the rock 'n' roll swagger. Poussez Posse aren't there yet.

Here comes a man who could show them the way. Bespectacled, moustachioed, and pirate-hatted, tonight Adam Ant looks like a cross between Captain Jack Sparrow and Rolf Harris. Well, we never expected him to walk on stage in beige slacks and a cardie, did we.

This is Adam Ant, a man who does flamboyance like other people do gardening.

His band - The Good, The Mad, And The Lovely Posse (everyone's a posse tonight) are anonymous musos in black, ensuring the focus stays on the main man. But the trademark twin drumkits are present and correct, and the sound is suitably brash and punky-rocky.

Adam himself, ever the showman, clearly relishes his role as the ringmaster of his own circus. And although he has an impressive pop star career behind him, it seems Adam Ant still thinks of himself as very much a punk.

Tonight's set leans heavily on his early material - the pre-pop-stardom songs, the entertainingly sleazoid proto-post-punk romps that gave Adam a modest notoriety and a cult following long before he hit the charts.

'Plastic Surgery' kicks things off, its seventies sardonic tone very much of its time: 'Plastic surgery is so...plastic!" 'Dog Eat Dog' - the first big hit, both tonight and in Adam's career - is rattled out with aplomb, and 'Beat My Guest' is every bit the manic sleazoid anthem it always was. It's enlivened by Adam's impromptu tumble from the stage, but he's hauled back by the bouncers and recovers himself, blaming - only half-jokingly - his failing eyesight.

It's a salutary reminder that Adam Ant is now 56, although he struts and showboats with the insouciant self-possession of a man twenty years younger. But his stance - half way between cocky and stroppy - suits the spiky, seething, after-dark punk songs that make up most of this show. It's a feast for those of us who were fans of the original Ants, the band that made the Dirk Wears White Sox album.

I can't help wondering what the fans - surely the majority - who came here on the strength of Adam's pop star years must think, as 'Zerox Machine', 'Deutscher Girls', and 'Never Trust A Man With Egg On His Face' swagger out of storage with their attitude intact.

In fact, Dirk is the only actual album that's represented in the set tonight. For the rest, it's singles all the way - many of them chart smasheroonies, too. 'Ant Music', 'Wonderful' (for which Adam's sometime and, apparently, present collaborator Boz Borer comes out to handle the guitar chores), 'Goody Two Shoes', 'Prince Charming' - the big hit singles are seen off with a careless dash.

Even a couple of obscurities get a run-out. 'Press Darlings' - Adam's riposte to bad reviews - is still a fine slice of don't-care vitriol, although it's bizarre to hear Adam still getting in a strop over Garry Bushell, years after the rest of us stopped giving a shit.

The rumbustious almost-cover of the Village People, 'A.N.T.S.', pops up, too. Originally a free flexidisc glued to the cover Flexipop magazine, that one's worth a mint now, if you never took the record off and played it. Unfortunately, I did. A grandstanding strut through T Rex's 'Get It On' leads into the max heaviosity grind of 'You're So Physical', and, finally, that's our lot.

Adam soaks up the applause - confident, wisecracking, wearing stardom like it's just another flamboyant stage costme, proving he can still do it to fans who might just have been beginning to wonder.

But, yes, Adam Ant can still do it, and although it's odd to find his most successful period represented only by a smattering of singles, while the relatively obscure debut album provides the bulk of the live set, there's a kind of logic at work.

After all, now that the post-punk period has become such a huge influence on contemporary music, why shouldn't Adam Ant remind us that he was there first?

Adam Ant: Website | MySpace | Facebook

Poussez Posse: Facebook

For more photos from this gig, find Adam Ant by name here.