Majestic Midge Ure: A Night of Timeless Hits and Electric Energy in Cardiff

By George Sandifer-Smith

I stood the test of time/I took the step to find…

Midge Ure’s November 2024 concert at the New Theatre in Cardiff was my first live music experience in a building I’ve been in many times from my childhood to my thirties. It was a fitting place for an exploration of a songbook from across Ure’s career – from Rich Kids to Ultravox and beyond, with a few surprises thrown in – as an iconic part of the landscape, a structure that’s weathered the changes of the years. The sound and lighting was excellent throughout, more than a match for the cultural energy emanating from the stage.

An artist known for his varied work in pop, as easy at the keys of a synth as he is shredding a guitar (and there were plenty of opportunities for him to take on the guitar hero guise, to the audience’s delight), I can only imagine the planning that went into the set list in order to make sure all bases were covered.

Following an opening set by India Electric Co. (well worth checking out in their own right), delightfully Ure’s backing band, playing their own material, and a dash to the bar, Ure strode on stage to rapturous applause and launched into ‘Marching Men’ by Rich Kids, Glen Matlock’s short-lived but rollicking post-Sex Pistols band in which a young Ure took on guitar duties. As the earliest point in Ure’s career in the set (I did ask him if any Slik numbers might make an appearance back in April but he said his TARDIS might not go back that far), it’s a surprisingly timeless number as the lyrics and mood reflect the times we are living in now – the fear of echoing jackboots as fear-driven mob mentality takes hold. It was an immediate reminder that great pop music does not exist in a vacuum, and can be powerful politically as well as musically.

From there we enjoyed a selection of Ure’s solo music alongside Ultravox songs – from ‘Passing Strangers’ to ‘May Your Good Lord’, with musicians chopping and changing instruments from guitar to bass to keyboard. The theatre setting really emphasises the liveliness of the music, with each song a statement not only carried out in voice and instruments but also in space and light, with musicians switching positions throughout, and the lighting powerful, colourful, and co-ordinated.

There was a lovely moment where Ure, having taken us through a variety of hits, announced that he would be playing a song he’d practiced often “as a spotty Glaswegian teenager” on the guitar. He and the band then proceeded to groove into a cover of Peter Green’s ‘The Supernatural’ that was almost primal in its energy – riffery that seemed to ascend from the centre of the earth, time out of memory, the tune one you realise has always been thumping in the back of your head your whole life. Not only was it note-perfect – you wouldn’t expect anything less – it also made Ure’s songs feel like part of a musical legacy, a wider context.

The acoustic guitar came out for ‘The Maker’, with Ure exchanging dark humour with the audience that it would be a miserable song as we are “tap dancing towards the end of the planet”. We sat in the “black, evil cloud” of the lyrics – fitting around any number of current horrors in the world like a Savile Row suit – a solemn moment of reflection on a dying world.

After a couple more quiet numbers, Ure hit the audience with the double whammy of ‘Vienna’ (“the one all the other halves here tonight have been waiting to hear,” he said cheekily and truthfully), followed by ‘Fade to Grey’, the Visage classic that had the audience up on its feet where they stayed for the rest of the evening. From there it was bumper-to-bumper anthems – ‘Love’s Great Adventure’, ‘Hymn’ (“Where’s my Welsh choir?” the songwriter calls to the crowd singing along with the power and the glory), and a surprising ‘The Boys are Back in Town’ in tribute to Ure’s time as part of Thin Lizzy. ‘One Small Day’ and ‘Dancing with Tears in My Eyes’ followed to close the set, or rather bring it to its false close before the encore. “You know how this works…I pretend to leave, then come back on.” The set-up for the encore was an interesting condensation of the evening – for Ultravox’s ‘The Voice’, Ure and the three members of his band lined up alongside one another playing synths and drums, a line-up rather than a group spread across different levels of stage, a lovely acknowledgment that music is a joy to collaborate on and find common ground in.

I would strongly recommend seeing Midge Ure on this tour, or indeed the next – his passion for pop music, particularly pop music with a message, is a wonder to behold, and you will feel the spirit move through you. Majestic.