Armistead Maupin described big, bearded gay men as "bears" in his Tales from the City books. There were plenty there last night but the bear-in-chief is John Grant. I have wanted to see him for a while because I'm a sucker for his ballads, but it was his vocal range, and the band's banging out of the numbers, during smoky silouettes, that was the surprise. The two best songs, in my humble, non-bearlike opinion, were "It doesn't matter to him" and the title track from album two, "Pale Green Ghosts". The voice and the tempo made them the winners. The one-we'd-been-waiting-for, GMF, disappointed. In fact, the only downer was perhaps the longish encore. The ABBA number was potentially superfluous, but, as everyone knows, if a bear arrives at the (round) house, you feed it..................
