Concerts

Concert Review: Suede, December 7th, O2 Arena

Posted on December 8, 2010 by Ricky in Concerts, Everything, Music | 8 Comments

London – What can you write about a concert featuring your favorite band singing 23 of your favorite songs and you are freaking close to the stage even though the show is at the cavernous O2 Arena (a place that has amusement park rides on the concourse). Suede at the O2 arena was amazing, it was as expected, my favorite show of the year and everything was amazing. Let’s start off with the set list:

This Hollywood Life
She
Trash
The Drowners
Animal Nitrate
We Are The Pigs
Pantomime Horse
By The Sea
Killing Of A Flashboy
Filmstar
Can’t Get Enough
Everything Will Flow
The Next Life
The Asphalt World
So Young
Metal Mickey
Heroine
The Wild Ones
New Generation
Beautiful Ones

Encore:
The Living Dead
To The Birds
Saturday Night

With the exceptions of Still Life and Europe is My Playground, everything I really wanted to hear was covered. It was an hour and forty five minutes of literally non stop singing action, as the Suede blazed from one song to another.

Let’s start from the beginning. I rarely ever go to arena shows. I have never even been to a show at the ACC, so imagine the look on the security guard’s face when I asked him if there was coat check. Haha. The O2 arena is set up nicely. There’s many restaurants everywhere for food. I kinda wish the ACC had that same setup. I got there at the end of the New Young Pony Club set, just enough time to hear The Bomb, which was all I really wanted to hear from them. We had lodged ourselves to the left of the stage not too far from the front, so the time in between the end of the NYPC set and the beginning of the Suede set was spent making sure no one got in front of us. The crowd was older as expected, but there were still a few younger kids in the crowd. Those kids have good taste.

At 9:15, the lights dimmed and a recording of Introducing the Band played over the soundsystem. The band soon emerged, dressed in all black and they launched into a vicious version of This Hollywood Life. Normally, I am not the biggest fan of that track, but tonight, it sounded so lively that you had no choice but to love it. As you would expect, the rest of the night was one big sing-a-long. Brett’s voice sounded great and he’s a great front man. Between his dancing, microphone twirling, call and response and dramatic singing, it made every song seems so much more epic. Songs like Pantomime Horse had an extra oomph to it, that had you thinking “yeah, there’s still some justine-damon resentment there”.

At 10:15, they played Asphalt World. So at 10:15pm on December 7th, 2010, I heard my favorite song ever live for the very first (and potentially last) time. I was a bit sad they cut it off after the four minute mark, but I didn’t expect them to play the whole ten minute version (or the Bernard version, I guess).

The 1-2 punch of New Generation and The Beautiful Ones was a great way to end off the initial set, as the former was a fist raising rauncher while the latterr inspired what might be the one of the greatest LA LA LA LA sessions of all time. You might make fun of Suede for all the Oooohhs they incorporate into their music, but at a show, those OOhhs are golden. GOLDEN.

All in all an amazing show. Paul went in a bit skeptical about the show and came out wanting to buy a t-shirt. For me, it’s something to be able to finally see a band you’ve loved for about twelve years. It’s something else to see them live and watch them kick ass. I’m not sure where Suede is going from here, but I’m hoping it’s a North America tour, since I can’t really afford to fly to England for these concerts all the time.

The Asphalt World by The London Suede

Concert Review: The Radio Dept, Dec. 5, Scala

Posted on December 7, 2010 by Paul in Concerts | 1 Comment

London – On principle, I am generally not  a fan of encores. They long ago stopped being a genuine surprise and/or expression of a band’s desire to keep playing and have since become more or less a cliche. The band goes through the charade of pretending to leave the stage and the audience pretty much always expects it to happen. This is why I’m secretly a little happy whenever a band doesn’t play an encore.

Still, sometimes circumstances can occur that make an encore seem like a genuinely special moment. Such a moment occurred during Radio Dept‘s Sunday night set at Scala. As the band left the stage, the crowd began to clap and stomp and cheer and do all the things that audiences do to bring a band back onstage.  But after a little while, the club piped in the prerecorded music that sends out a particular message: there will be no encore. Yet on this night, people did not just resign themselves to this fact and instead kept on clapping. And much to my surprise (and the band’s as well) they came back onstage and then proceeded to … well, to do nothing for a little bit.

“Sorry, we don’t usually do encores.”  they said as they figured out what to do. Problems with the drum machine combined with the fact that they really hadn’t planned on coming out again led to some scrambling around but eventually they worked out a drum-free rendition of “1995” that had much of the audience clapping along and left us all satisfied (except for the guy outside afterwards who was overheard to say he expected more of them. Relax, guy.  It was a good show).

The encore was the perfect ending to an equally impressive set of songs from their latest, Clinging To A Scheme, along with several older numbers … but not “Where Damage Isn’t Already Done.” In response to a shouted request for “Damage,” singer Johan Duncanson replied, “Sorry, we haven’t rehearsed that one,” before adding, “This one is almost as old.” They then launched into “Bus,” also off their debut album, Lesser Matters. Perhaps this was intended as some sort of consolation prize.

Overall, it was a good show. The band’s dreamy, shoegazey brand of indie pop came across quite well live. The songs tend to blend together but in a good wall of noise sort of way, achieving a mesmerising quality. Duncanson’s voice shone through pretty strongly and the whole band seemed like pretty laid back but solid performers, not saying too much in terms of stage banter.  Radio Dept. seemed happy to play before the fairly packed audience and were obviously somewhat surprised at the crowd calling for the aforementioned encore. “On a Sunday night too!” said Duncanson as they returned to the stage. I will admit that I was not overly familiar with Radio Dept’s stuff before this show, but they impressed me and they definitely restored my faith in the concept of the encore. They earned that encore.

Radio Dept. – Heaven’s On Fire by AnnaVictrola

Concert Review: Stornoway, El Mocambo, November 30

Posted on December 5, 2010 by Ricky in Concerts | Leave a comment

Toronto – British folk music is starting to take over. With the surging popularity of acts like Laura Marling and Mumford & Sons, its only fitting we see more and more bands from this genre. Enter Stornaway, a four piece folk act from england with an occasional strings and horn section. They were in town on Thursday to promote their new album Beachcomber’s Windowsill, which featured the hit single Zorbing.

The set started off with a violin solo by violinist Rahul Satija. The rest of the band took the stage shortly. The 4 piece band featured Brian Briggs on vocals, Rob Steadman on Drums and Jon Ouin and Oli Steadman on various instruments. The latter two’s usage of synths, banjos and various string instruments had me actually doubting my labeling of them as a folk band as they showed a lot more depth and layered with their sounds. Still, the band played a solid set of cleverly written songs that made you feel like you were in a tavern, in some village on a rolling hill somewhere in Britain. The English dominate crowd seemed to appreciate all the references to the old country. The band seemed genuinely pleased to be playing to such a large crowd after having played Columbus the previous night.

What really set the show apart was the encore. With the crowd already in the palm of his hands following the 1-2 set ending punch featuring the previously mentioned Zorbing , lead singer Brian Briggs took the stage for the encore and asked the crowd if he could play unplugged. Bringing back the string section, Stornoway played an incredible version of The End of the Movie. The unplugged guitars coupled with a string secton made the song sound absolutely incredible. It was so good that the couple standing beside us finally shut up and stopped talking during the song. An equally strong acappella version of We Are the Battery Human capped off what turned out to be a spectacular show.

Stornoway – The End Of The Movie by ballongino

Concert Review: Leif Vollebekk, Wilderness of Manitoba, November 25th, Horseshoe Tavern

Posted on December 1, 2010 by Ricky in Concerts | Leave a comment

Toronto – Although I am more of a brit rock / electro pop listening kind of guy, I generally believe that everytypes of music has it’s place and time. It turned out that last Thursdays triple bill of Olenka, Leif Vollebekk and the Wilderness of Manitoba was the perfect place and time for me. You see, I had arrived at the Horseshoe on the heels of a hard fought ball hockey game, one where I got so pissed at one of our own players for his lack of defensive intensity that I yelled at him on one particular play loud enough for the entire gym to hear, and made some of my teammates cringe. It was a bit harsh, but I don’t care much for half hearted efforts on the court. I needed to simmer down. It was just a ball hockey game in a recreational league. What I needed, was a night of smooth, relaxing, homely folkish songs, and that’s what I got on Thursday.

Arriving later then I expected, I missed Olenka & The Autumn Lovers set, which started at 9pm sharp. From what I heard, it was pretty good. Shortly after 10 pm, Leif Vollebekk entered the stage with a drummer and a bassist, something that apparently is not typical for him. Leif had a very laid back demeanor and frequently made funny anecdotes with the crowd. It was very homely.

His music reminded me of Bob Dylan mixed with some Ryan Adams. Basically, it was a bunch of storyish lyrics layered over some calming acoustic guitar work. I wonder if I got the Dylan comparison because he did a Dylan cover. I’m not sure. Maybe I just ripped off what Frank wrote. I’m not sure about that either. It was pleasant. I think harmonica’s have a way of calming people down, makes you think of those times back in the day when things were simpler, and you were some beggar in the midwest, just trying to find a living, hopping on trains with other similarly unfortunate souls and as you past the time, you whip out the harmonica and bust out some songs about struggling. That’s what I visualize when I heard these tunes. Just the good ole days. Maybe in my previous lifetime I was one of these people in the wild wild west. Maybe I’ve been playing too much Red Dead Redemption. I don’t know.

The Wilderness of Manitoba were the headliners on this triple bill. It was a landmark moment for me. This was the fifth time I’ve seen the band, making them the band I’ve seen the most. Up until last Thursday, I had seen the following bands four times:

The Antlers
Belle & Sebastian
British Sea Power
Franz Ferdinand
Interpol
Matt & Kim
The Rapture
Voxtrot

Yet somehow the Wilderness of Manitoba managed to surpass them all in just a year! How did this happen? I don’t even have an album of theirs. They aren’t even British. It goes to show, if you work as hard as they do, and play in the city as many times as they have, inevitably, you will have seem them live a few times. I last saw the Wilderness of Manitoba at Summerworks. Re-reading that article, I just realized I used the same material from the last article as I did in the previous paragraph. Sigh. I’m a recycler of my own words.

Even with my fading memory, I am happy to announce that the band seemed to have taken another step forward in their showmanship. I’m not sure how much they utilized their drummer in the past, but this time around, he was quite a large part of their show, providing a nice oomph to their otherwise soft folk music. It appealed to the side of me that like music to move a quicker pace, something that a folk act occasionally misses. It was a nice little bit of enhanced energy that added to their show, which once again featured exceptional harmonies. My only complaint was that I didn’t quite hearthe bowl that one of the dudes used, making it seemed kind of gimmicky (especially if you haven’t seen them before) and also Melissa’s vocals seemed to have been drowned out by the louder then usual instruments.

All in all, it was a lovely evening filled with friendly vibes and peaceful, calming music.

The Wilderness of Manitoba – Bluebirds (Live at Yale St July 14 2010) by PirateClub

« Previous   1 2 ... 387 388 389 390 391 392 393 394 395 396 ... 508 509   Next »