Concert review :
Wembley Arena, London, UK 9 February
from The Guardian by John Aizlewood

One of Texas's many endearing traits is their bloody-minded straightness. A greatest hits show was promised; a greatest hits show is delivered. The results are predictable: a sell-out arena tour and an assured place for The Greatest Hits, their singles compilation, in the top 10 until at least Easter. Yet it takes even Texas 30 minutes to negotiate the usual Wembley hurdles of atrocious sound and cowed crowd. Halo, Black Eyed Boy and In Our Lifetime are received as if Sharleen Spiteri is picking up awards for best marrow at the local village fete.

For all their musical accomplishments, Texas are not especially showy and you would plump for any of his eight on-stage colleagues as being Texas's musical brains before alighting upon woolly hatted bassist Johnny McElhone, bobbing away in his own world, avoiding spotlights and video cameras alike.

Inevitably, then, Texas live is the Spiteri show. More mobile than of yore, she works hard, offering the crowd the carrots of tales about cab rides, plus the stick of admonishment: "You're a bit bloody quiet." On their first of two diversions (the second will be Suspicious Minds), she plucks an extraordinarily self-confident Spaniard from the crowd to gyrate with her during Grace Jones's Pull Up to the Bumper. With all the braggadocio the Iberian peninsular can muster, he does indeed pull up close to Spiteri's bumper. She removes his hands from her buttocks and looks delighted to have found someone in the building as feisty as her.

Signally, the tide does not turn until Spiteri, alone but for her acoustic guitar, wrestles with Put Your Arms Around Me. It's a deceptively simple song, but she wrings a plethora of new nuances from it, underlining what a genuinely outstanding soul voice she has.

That flicks the switch. The crowd rouse themselves and what had seemed a Sisyphean struggle was now downhill until the close. I Don't Want A Lover showcases Ally McErlaine's cut-throat guitar, Eddie Campbell's keyboards thunder through the anthemic Summer Son, and Spiteri dresses in the manner of Elvis Presley's comeback special for the encores.

A fine British band playing all their hits and taking nothing for granted? Texas certainly keep their promises.


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