Run the Jewels review – an exhilarating high-wire act

Pugnaciously pacing … Run the Jewels at Garage, Glasgow. Photograph: Ross Gilmore/Redferns Photograph: Ross Gilmore/Redferns

This gig almost didn’t happen. After freak weather disrupted their flights, swashbuckling hip-hop duo Run the Jewels had to commandeer a van to make the first night of their UK tour. “We drove nine hours to get here,” says El-P, swigging from a bottle of vodka he appears to have lifted directly from the bar. The crowd, antsy and irritable for the past two hours, responds with delirious cheer. It may be later with Jewels, but that’s OK.

El-P and his burly partner, Killer Mike, are veterans of the rap scenes in New York and Atlanta, respectively, able to combine deep pulls from pop culture with glints of emotional maturity. They may be a bit older than many of their peers, but they’ve also outpaced them, releasing two dazzling (and free to download) albums in less than 18 months. The most recent, Run the Jewels 2, has appeared in the highest tiers of best albums of 2014 lists across the spectrum.

Both records are overflowing with political fury and subversive playfulness, sometimes in the same couplet. Killer Mike has spoken and written movingly about the ongoing events in Ferguson, but is just as persuasive when teasing El-P about his love for Steven Seagal.

Live, the beats are as insistent and unsettling as the rhymes are fleet. Blockbuster Night Part 1 has a dark echo of the Doctor Who theme music, with Killer Mike “pugnaciously pacing” the gates of hell. On the lurching Sea Legs, as the audience provide the doomy chorus refrain, they swap verses about the pull of the criminal life and sniping from the top of the Eiffel tower.

It’s an exhilarating high-wire act, a crammed hour of capricious, self-aware posturing and fiery proselytising. The one track they don’t hype is Early, which deals with police corruption and brutality. “We’ll let this one speak for itself,” says El-P, before Killer Mike rat-a-tats a grimly plausible scenario of being arrested in front of his young family while someone films it on their smartphone.

By the time they get to Angel Duster, which slyly samples the Steve Miller Band, they’ve completely seduced and energised the crowd. As they leave the stage, a forest of arms springs up, recreating the group’s logo of a clenched fist and a finger gun, like an ominous escalation of rock, paper, scissors. It’s a worthy salute.