When I finally get around to writing the definitive Big Book About Shouty Bands With Guitars, one whole chapter will be devoted to the baffling question of why Therapy? have not consistently been one of the biggest bands in the world.
My fondness for this group goes back a long way, to an afternoon in London in 1994 when I popped into one of the big record stores along Oxford Street way to get something or other and had my attention seized by the thunderous racket that was playing over the in-store PA. Apparently it was a band called Therapy? – pay attention to the question mark – and the album was called Troublegum. I bought it and was instantly hooked.
Roll forward the best part of twenty years to a very soggy Sunday afternoon in Lucerne, a town I was embarrassed never to have visited in spite of having worked in Switzerland for fifteen years. The latest T? tour had brought them to a small but efficient and immaculate club called the Konzerthaus Schüür and for once the timing of the gig worked for me. Muse and Rush, pay attention. I took the opportunity to visit the Old Town while taking care not to drown as the rain lashed down, and then after an excellent dinner in a vaguely out-of-place ristorante ticinese I headed downtown alongside the railway tracks to find the club and get deafened.
Once inside the support band did their noisy and enthusiastic bit and then it was time for the main event. The first thing Andy did was to encourage the audience, which was a little reticent and hanging back from the stage, to advance a little; he did this by crooning a version of Phyllis Nelson’s abysmal but bafflingly successful 1985 hit Move Closer. Which was original and at least mildly effective.
And then we were off. The band in their trademark dark suits, shirts and ties look like mafiosi but they rock like madmen, all frantic pogoing and bouncing around and rock-star poses.
We were treated to a set encompassing stuff from both ends of their career, with three opening tracks from latest album A Brief Crack of Light being followed by a rousing Teethgrinder from Nurse, a frantic Die Laughing from Troublegum and a furious Bad Mother from Infernal Love.
This was not a band going through the motions.
Then things got even better, as they rolled out in quick succession my two favourite tracks. First Misery from Infernal Love, which for me epitomises their ability to marry bleak subject matter with snappy word play (“And now you’re going to go all girlie on me / You always left me wanting / Now I want you to leave”) and ferocious punk-pop-metal dynamics. And then the huge Exiles from Crooked Timber, a song about loneliness and isolation in a small country.
Throughout they never ceased inciting the audience into more participation, playing harder and faster to keep things moving, while Andy got into character in singing, passing rapidly from cheerful bonhomie to disturbingly wild-eyed maniacal stares as the lyrics demanded.
The twin covers of Isolation and Diane ended the main set, and then we were treated to a long burst of encores, starting with Sister from the criminally under-rated Suicide Pact album, running through oldies including the inevitable Screamager – which was the point I think where my hearing really started to suffer – and ending with a raucous singalong Potato Junkie.
And then the band were gone and the lights were on and it was time to head back up the road, ears ringing but extremely content.
