Gary Numan
Ace Of Spades, Sacramento
February 28, 2024
Photos by Paul Piazza
There are few things that are certain in this world: the sun will rise in the East, set in the West, and Gary Numan will tour at least once a year. The last of those events is what brought me to the Ace of Spades in Sacramento to attend a nearly sold out show, only the third time that he had played in the capitol of California. By the time that doors opened at 7pm, the line to get in was going around the block across the street from the venue, a sign that the city has more than its fair share of Numanoids.
Coming onstage with his band, the set kicked off with a blistering rendition of “Everything Comes Down To This,” from his 2013 album Splinter: Songs From A Broken Mind. The album has been regarded as Numan’s true comeback album, and it’s not hard to hear why: songs like “Everything…” saw Numan essentially combining the best elements of the industrial sound that he had been perfecting over the nearly twenty years before the album’s release, and the song is one of the best from the album. It’s easy to hear why it’s become a staple in his live set since Splinter came out.
The set that followed was essentially a tried-and-true run of the songs that Numan and his band have been regularly performing since the release of his latest album, 2021’s Intruder. I love that songs that had been ignored over his last couple of album tours, particularly “Halo” and “Haunted (both from his 2006 album Jagged), have become staples in his setlist again for the first time in over a decade.
When I had last seen Numan and his band touring, around this time last year, drummer Jimmy Lucido had recently taken over on the drums, following the departure of long-time percussionist Richard Beasley. And while Jimmy seemed more than up to the task, you could tell that he was still a little wet behind the ears. That was not the case this time around. Jimmy is not perfectly matching the energy and playing of the rest of Gary’s band, consisting of long-time members Steve Harris on guitars and David Brooks on keyboards, while bassist Tim Slade joined Numan’s live band at the beginning of the tour for Intruder.
With his entire band playing in sync with each other so well, songs like “Metal,” “The Chosen,” and “My Name Is Ruin” are being performed in the most bombastic and intense versions that I’ve ever seen over the long time that I’ve been attending Gary Numan concerts. Part of the songs being performed in such harsh versions could also be attributed to inspiration from having toured with industrial metal trailblazers Ministry over the last year; perhaps seeing Al Jourgensen and company performing night after night has inspired Numan to crank the loudness of his own sets to eleven. Steve Harris even brought the power of the music directly to members of the audience when he went out into the audience during one of the songs, playing his guitar right in the faces of the crowd.
If there are any complaints that I have about the show, they stem from how little variation there had been between the setlist that he was touring with last year and the setlist that he’s touring with this year. With the exception of “Films,” one of my favorite songs from his seminal 1979 album The Pleasure Principle, the setlist at Ace Of Spades was essentially a cut-and-paste from last year’s set at The Mystic Theater in Petaluma. While I understand wanting to keep certain things consistent, I feel that there was more than enough room to add in a few surprises, particularly during the encore, when he performed set regular “Here In The Black,” a song that I’ve never found to be appropriate as an encore song. I feel like older songs like “I Die: You Die,” “Me! I Disconnect From You,” or even something from the overlooked Sacrifice and Exile albums would make for a welcome change and feel more like songs deserving of being in an encore.
None of the complaints that I have can take away from the fact that the band gave it their all, and it seems like every time I see Gary Numan play he continues to deliver a more and more intense and energetic live show than before. I’m not joking when I say that the music of Gary Numan has saved my life more than once, because it has, and it continues to do so. Even if Gary and his band don’t play a setlist catered to my particular tastes every single time that I see him, I’ve never come away from a show of his thinking that it was bad. At 65 years old, Gary Numan is still at the top of his game as a performer, and I will always look forward to the next time that I see him play live.
Opening the evening was the electro-industrial band Front Line Assembly, a band that just might be the best opener for Numan that I’ve ever seen. Frontman and mastermind Bill Leeb was in top form, and while the band’s setlist was nearly identical to the one they played the previous evening opening for Ministry, the band performed with more energy than they had the night before. Their music had more immediacy to it in a smaller venue than in a larger theater like The Warfield. The band deserves a headlining tour of their own soon, and I’ll gladly be in the front row when they come back again.
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