If Everlast and Eminem ever come to blows - which they nearly did last autumn when Eminem recorded a song attacking the former House of Pain frontman as a "punk pussy bitch" - the smart money says Everlast would wipe the floor with his rival. Em may own a chainsaw, but Ev is a weightier proposition in the ways that count.
Despite a near-fatal heart attack three years ago, aged only 28, the former Eric Schrody has engineered a career manoeuvre that has vaulted him from rap has-been to acclaimed wild-hearted blues belter. So much for the idea that rappers sing like elks. Everlast steers his songs' minor-key melancholy with the gravelly beauty of Tom Waits. Coming from someone whose only hit with House of Pain, Jump Around, owed its hookline to the Osmonds' Crazy Horses, this is impressive.
Inevitably, Jump Around made an appearance in this set, and its homeboy euphoria induced mass wobbling in the stuffed Astoria. One supplicant even waved a pair of crutches over his head. But its good-time foolishness was an anomaly in an evening devoted to Everlast's two solo albums, the 3m-selling Whitey Ford Sings the Blues and last year's Eat at Whitey's. Even as Jump Around trumpeted to a halt, Everlast was climbing behind an acoustic guitar for the painfully lovely torch song Black Coffee. Definitely not the All Saints number, it commanded rapt attention as the band quieted to a whisper, and Ev sighed, "She's like a junkie, just like a junkie," echoed by guest diva Carleen Anderson.
Whoever "she" was, she disturbed Everlast as much as the "they" who crop up in the country-blues melodrama Black Jesus ("They call me white devil, black Jesus"), which he sang as if half-consumed by fire and brimstone. These paled, though, beside the shock of Painkiller, which employed disjointed hip-hop to record his feelings at waking up after his heart attack. "Can't believe it, I'm in a wheelchair," he rapped, terse and unforgiving.
Although nothing like House of Pain's raucous escapism, Everlast's new incarnation is striking a chord. His promotion from the tiny cellar he played last time he was in London to the larger Astoria testifies to his public's willingness to embrace him, angst and all.
