Gang of Two Plus Two

The Gang of Four, Sony Music Hall, April 24th, 2025

Gang of Two Plus Two at Sony Hall, April 24th: (from left) Gail Greenwood, Hugo Burnham, Jon King, and Ted Leo

Open since 2018 in a roomy, proudly unmodernized space on West 46th Street that began its life in 1938 as a vaudeville venue called Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe, Sony Hall seats 500 with plenty of standing room. I’d only been inside once, for a superb albeit half full Jon Langford-Sally Timms show a year ago. But on Thursday night the joint was both mobbed and jumping as the great U.K. postpunk band Gang of Four made the New York stop on what is supposedly their farewell tour although we shall see. That Langford set radiated a commitment it was enlarging to be in the same room with. But as my nightclubbing slows to a crawl at 83, I literally cannot remember encountering another show as intense and galvanizing in, say, the past decade. Ornette’s 2014 farewell, maybe? That’s the territory.

Not that they’re Ornette, of course. Nobody is. But then, on a somewhat cruder level, nobody’s Gang of Four either, not even if this version could also be called Gang of Two Plus Two. In the place of original guitarist Andy Gill, who died of Covid in 2020, was veteran D.C. indie-rocker Ted Leo; in the place of original bassist Dave Allen, who died earlier this month, was Gail Greenwood of Belly and L7. But back behind the drums after a long stint as an indie bizzer in both London and NYC was booming Hugo Burnham. And unmissable up front was vocalist Jon King, who with due respect to his bandmates was not just the star of this show but delivered a performance as powerful as any I’ve been lucky enough to witness in years.

By this I do not mean that King projected insuperable charisma or virtuosity. I mean that although the Sony Hall foursome could be no one other than the Gang of Four—for one thing, they came out and played in order all 12 songs on that band’s 1980 debut album Entertainment!—but that the sound they generated was, incredibly yet also revealingly I would hope for the many rabid Go4 fans who jammed the joint, considerably harsher and more intense than the classic studio originals. It certainly registered that way for me. In part this effect no doubt reflected the nearly half century of wear and tear King’s voice has undergone since 1980. And it was greatly intensified by the hyperactive leaping and dashing and contorting King put into a stage show not altogether unlike a shitfit.

Man vs. Microwave

But at this historical moment, to me it seems undeniable that King and his cohort felt the need to be extra disruptive, maybe even sonically. This always was, after all, a proudly if not therefore straightforwardly political band who in their current form know damn well that history hasn’t been looking any better lately. That’s one reason, I’m sure, that King added percussion to the second set-opening “He’d Send in the Army” by steadily attacking a microwave with a baseball bat. On either side of the stage there were screens that flashed Go4 song titles as well as political slogans: “To Hell With Poverty,” “Do Think Twice. It’s Not All Right,” the Frederick Douglass apothegm “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” I hope everyone who bought a ticket to a great concert got the message.