Rolling into the old school surroundings of Swansea’s Sin City Peter Doherty & The Puta Madres with Marc Eden in tow seems wholly appropriate and a wonderful aligning of the stars for this Travelling circus.  Eden takes the stage fashionably late and his very short yet to the point set entertains the audience with his minstrel musings.  ‘Debt Collector’ was up first and to be fair it sounded wonderful with just his voice and an acoustic guitar oddly its one of the standout tracks on the Peckham Cowboys ’10 Tales From The Gin Palace’ album but rather a different beast live with just a guitar and a voice.  Doherty’s audience didn’t quite know how to take Eden at first but with ‘Crackhouse Blues’ and a stunning version of Dylans One More Cup Of Coffee’ under his belt and the sold-out audience was certainly warming to the singer. Sadly as soon as it had begun Eden was introducing the final number or numbers as he ran through a brief medley to warm up this audience with ‘Wild Rover’ and ‘Dirty Old Town’ which seemed quite fitting under the circumstances. Nice to see Eden out amongst it as its been a while since he last rode through town with his Cowboys maybe next time?

Right after a fairly long interval, the room was about ready to burst as the band ambled onstage and broke into the set and whilst the band sounded tight I can’t help but smile with the feeling that they spend the entire set flying by the seat of their undergarments as Doherty does tend to adlib shall we say and wander off on a tangent.  I do however feel that  he is as sharp as a tack as he cottoned on to the Audiences tribal chants of You Jack Bastard aimed at young Jones wearing his local teams football shirt with Peter renaming ‘Last Of The Englsih Roses’ to ‘Last Of The Jack Bastards’.

The set was predominantly made up of tracks the band played the previous few nights of the tour with the likes of ‘Travelling Tinker’, ‘Albion’ all going down really well.  The first new song from the album to be aired ‘Who’s Been Having You Over’  sounded magnificent and it really captured the moment. Whilst I love hearing songs like ‘You’re My Waterloo’ and the jazzy ‘Always Something There To Remind Me’ was inspired it wasn’t until the encore that the audience was really able to cut loose during ‘Fuck Forever’ maybe had the set been peppered with a couple more uptempo rockers if you like this might have been elevated from a really good gig to a memorable I was there performance. Having said that ‘Paradise Is Under Your Nose’ was spectacular and a youthful and energetic audience was as quiet as Doherty was ever going to get them no matter how many times he would have asked for hush.

It was however great to see Peter Doherty & The Puta Madres end their tour on the sunny sands of Swansea Bay and I love the fact it could fall off the edge of a cliff at any given moment or be the tightest magical night of Rock ‘n’ Roll ever, (isn’t that what makes this Rock n Roll business so diverse and magical?)  Now if only he could bring his other band down for a show that would be a right treat. In the meantime I look forward to the album coming out in April and whatever happens next.

Author: Dom Daley