Stewart Lee
’s celestial choices. Plus reanimated Brummies, maverick maestros and some fine fiddling
A year pre-Covid, outside Islington’s Hope & Anchor on a summer evening to see mod punk classicists The Fallen Leaves, the board unexpectedly promises “support from Cult Figures”. Not the Birmingham band that made two singles in 1979 then disappeared? Yes! Released in 2018,
The 166 Ploughs A Lonely Furrow was the album Cult Figures should have made in 1980, but 2021’s
Deritend is a slick sixties-suffused punk pop set of Keith Moon tubthumping and Carnaby Street crooning. “Silver Blades” mythologises the titular ice rink of Midland memory. “Concrete And Glass” laments the textural changes of Cult Figures’ hometown in an affecting Brummie burr.