Luke Haines, Rock and Roll Animals, Elgar Room - Royal Albert Hall

Shadowy former Auteurs frontman Luke Haines descends upon the Royal Albert Hall’s Elgar Room this month for a live playthrough of his psychedelic new album Rock and Roll Animals. A prolific songwriter/performer - whose work includes 1992’s visionary Mercury Prize nominated album New Wav e - , Haines is one of the most underrated names in music and to many an offbeat, understated genius. 

Haines has a reputation for bold conceptual moves, and the murky, uncharted territory into which his lyrics strike out has ranged from the ideology of the Baader Meinhof group (covered in a 10-track audio-account of the same name) to the troubling and oddly sweet mini-ballad Unsolved Child Murder, which the Auteurs released as a Christmas single in 1996. 

Rock and Roll Animals is less dark than previous form might prescribe, but lives up to imaginative precedent. It’s an idiosyncratic, fairytale-esque little album telling the story of an imagined friendship between three musical legends: 50s rock’n’roll star Gene Vincent, the producer and songwriter Nick Lowe, and Jimmy Pursey of punk band Sham 69 – like Haines himself an upstart from the Surrey town of Walton-on-Thames. 

Except in this story – incidentally narrated by the magnificently sinister comedy weirdo Julia Davis - they appear as an allegorical trio of guitar-adroit woodland creatures: a cat, a badger and a fox respectively. Don’t say we didn’t warn you this would be off the wall.

In service to the conceit there’s a starry, mystical feel about these tracks which, just when they’re about to border on the twee, is rescued by a bassy, folky, foot-tapping warmth and some typically right-on Hainesian barbs at cultural theft in mainstream art. Haines has huge talent for satirical clarity, but also for bringing unexpected warmth to the darkest of lyrics, and wit to the most opaque emotional conundrums. This is a great chance to see this raw magic in the flesh, in a stripped-back show featuring accompaniment from Jack Cheshire.