The Streets Makes An Easy Living Look Way Too Easy

When you take into consideration the themes Mike Skinner tackles on The Streets' new album, The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living, the California/tropical holiday vibe was appropriate for Friday night's show at the Phoenix.

An orange and black palm tree print graced the drapery as well as the uniformed T-shirts of Skinner's backing band. Two massive bottles of alcohol (vodka and brandy, for those who are curious) were rigged to a contraption that was placed top-down and ready, at a finger's push, to deliver their powerful potions. By the end of the night, these bottles would be empty, delivered into the mouths of audience members at the hands of grime king Skinner.

The man known for his personal yet bubbly rap (and, of course, his endearing British accent) put sincerity aside for the night and allowed his four-piece backing band (stepped up from a sidekick singer and a DJ on Skinner's last Toronto visit) to nearly drown out his vocals at most points. During the breaks he engaged in comedy routines with singer Leo The Lion that sounded perhaps a little too planned out.

"Usually he goes way dirtier than that," Skinner asserted after a less-than-spontaneous interaction between Leo and a "bouncy" female audience member.

Such charades continued throughout the night, with Skinner and Leo sounding like a grime rap Abbott and Costello routine, their jokes usually revolving around the sexiness of a fan near the front of the house.

While the spectacle-ish show certainly had entertaining moments and the band were solid — spandex-tight, in fact — the antics became tiresome, and Skinner's hard-nosed insistence on making everyone crouch down and jump up at repeated intervals was annoying and power-trippy. The big "if" about this whole concert was, "What if The Streets slimmed down to a minimal stage set-up in a calmer environment and sang about the things he's talking about on the records?"

Candid revelations about Skinner's life are what drew fans to him in the first place. What this show sorely lacked was The Streets telling us, in his inimitable style, about the ups and down of the daily grime.