Half Man Half Biscuit
Electric Ballroom, London
20/1/2023
 

IN CAMDEN TOWN on a cold January night, a man down the front is crying and bellowing along to the closing track of a band’s sixteenth studio album: Oblong of Dreams, a paean to place and belonging worthy of Wordsworth.

Up on stage, Nigel Blackwell, Britain’s greatest living songwriter, is an unassuming type, his genius known only to a lucky few. Half Man Half Biscuit’s wonderful, warm and endearingly obsessive fan base are all here, packed like expectant sardines after drinking weak lager in a Camden boozer.

While many of their era have long since sunk into a morass of nostalgia tours, new tunes met with a rush to the bar, Nigel and the boys are more vital than ever.