Gig review: Kiefer Sutherland at O2 Academy Leeds
With a decade’s worth of rootsy blues-rock and bourbon-stained Americana, the London-born multi-hyphenate returns with gravel in his throat and his heart on his sleeve.
“This is the third or fourth time we’ve played this town,” Kiefer Sutherland informs the O2 Academy Leeds early on. Beard cropped close, and with a craggy voice to match the tone of his scuffed-up Fender, he gives a wry grin. “We just like it here, you know?”
With a decade’s worth of rootsy blues-rock and bourbon-stained Americana underneath his belt, the London-born actor-turned-multi-hyphenate has long since carved out a comfortable niche of his own within the country-style outlaw ranks.
Yet the arrival of the star’s fourth long-player Grey later this month comes amid mixed fortunes on the whole; while this ongoing European run has seen him play to some of the biggest rooms of his career, sluggish ticket sales back across the North Atlantic has forced him to pull a United States leg amid an economic squeeze on the gig circuit.
Not that it appears to be on Sutherland’s mind. Besuited with rancher stetson and Cuban heels, he arrives back in West Yorkshire armed with gravel in his throat and his heart on his sleeve.
At the helm of a backing four-piece that play with proficient rhythm and workmanship, he presides over close to an hour-and-a-half of music that spreads the breadth of his career thus far, ranging from the heartland throb of Goodbye California to the bar-brawl rockabilly that underpins This Is How It’s Done, with a few choice diversions along the way.
Throughout, the star is in garrulous fashion, but only when it comes to the music – those hoping for any anecdotes about his stay around the LS postcode area for his fish-out-of-water comedy Tinsel Town are out of luck. But save a laconic gunslinger drawl that recalls his youthful days in Young Guns and its sequel, he keeps matters mostly tight, offering reinventions of Garbage and Phil Collins to accompany the Petty-esque Ol’ Lonely Life and pedal-lap widescreen shapes of Something You Love.
“We’re glad to keep coming back,” Sutherland intones before a conclusive Starlight unfurls with a dusty melancholia. Quite where that return will take him could prove to be quite the fascinating ride indeed.