On a stage in Edinburgh, thick with dry ice, a bus shelter materialises and a man in black steps out. Mike Skinner, AKA the Streets, has come to take us back in time. Pint in his right hand, mic in his left, he begins: “It was supposed to be so easy …” And just like that it’s 2004 again.
Had he been trying to court a mass audience, Skinner wrote in his memoir, “I certainly wouldn’t have made a concept album about someone losing a thousand pounds down the back of the TV”. Yet that is indeed the premise of his 2004 album A Grand Don’t Come for Free, a British classic which, judging by the noisy Corn Exchange crowd, is loved by more than one generation.
This tour is the first time it is being performed in its entirety. Full-album shows can be hit and miss, but the picaresque nature of the record suits a recital, and an impressive live band reproduces its colourful sound world.
The staging is semi-theatrical. Skinner, head to toe in Stone Island, remains in character for the time it takes to run through all 11 tracks. He doesn’t acknowledge the audience. His delivery is deadpan. Between verses, sitting in the bus shelter as backing singers bang out big choruses, he has the glum zen torpor of a snooker player awaiting his turn at the table.
Those vocalists are crucial to the show. Roo Savill, in particular, is fantastic in the role of Simone, the girlfriend in the album’s story: flirty on Could Well Be In, combative in Get Out of My House.
After a brief interval, Skinner runs through a selection of other work. Breaking character, he raps into faces and phones. Given the earlier intensity, he seems happy to be playful. That works for Don’t Mug Yourself, but Never Went to Church, a beautiful song about the loss of his father, feels undermined by his goofing around.
If this second act feels a little padded-out then that is perhaps because the first half was so strong. The show ends with Skinner crowd-surfing to Take Me As I Am and then bringing it full circle with an apt closing line: “It was s’posed to be so eeeeeasy …” Well, that was how he made it look.