Apologies for the barrage of gig reviews recently, it’s just that October seems to be my designated gig month of 2011 and I haven’t really been doing much else.
Last Friday I went to see Death From above 1979 at Brixton Academy. Before my thoughts on the band, I have to ask does anyone know what the f*ck is going on with the stage? They’ve put in a platform in the front half that levels off the ground and brings it flush with the original stage, and then they have built a smaller stage on top of it with scaffolding. It looks rubbish and also means that you don’t have the view advantage that came with the sloped floor, so I really hope it’s not permanent.
Anyway; the bands. I got there too late for the first support act, Me, but I had the unfortunate luck to witness The Computers. The music was pretty good, the band had a thing going on with their matching white outfits, but the lead singer totally ruined it by screaming all the vocals and making seriously cheesy remarks in between songs. Usually I don’t mind a bit of screaming here and there, but the music really didn’t suit it so it just ended up sounding odd. Consider me not impressed.
Death From Above 1979 were great though, and they played through a swift set as their now-familiar reunion banner hung behind them. The crowd started off a bit apprehensive but soon warmed up, and everyone around me was happily dancing, moshing and flailing through their favourite tracks. The highlight for me was Romantic Rights where Sebastien took a little wander around the stage and down to the fans, before leaping back onto his drumkit for the manic ending to the song. I don’t think anyone could complain about the setlist, with the majority of ‘You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine’, ‘Heads Up’ and various b-sides getting an airing. The only issue I had was that the sound wasn’t amazing, but then none of the gigs I’ve seen DFA1979 do this year have had great sound so it may just be an issue with the way they play.
The setlist was:
Turn It Out
Dead Womb
Going Steady
Too Much Love
Cold War
Black History Month
Go Home, Get Down
Little Girl
Blood On Our Hands
You’re A Woman, I’m A Machine
Pull Out
We Don’t Sleep At Night
Romantic Rights
Do It!
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You’re Lovely (But You’ve Got Lots Of Problems)
Losing Friends
My latest gig was The Horrors at the Roundhouse last night. I was seriously excited for this as I have been playing their newest album ‘Skying’ non-stop since it came out, and I’ve been really impressed with all the performances I have seen this year. I took my mum along as well as she’s been loving their last two albums. The support act Toy were good enough to warm the crowd up, but not particularly memorable. We got some drinks and moved into the centre of the crowd to get the best view, with myself assuring my mum that The Horrors’ crowd weren’t a jumpy lot. How wrong I was!
It was just a fantastic, mesmerising gig. The setlist wasn’t particularly long, but we got an addition to the encore in the form of ‘Monica Gems’ and some of the more lengthy tracks helped to pad the set out to around 80 minutes. The band looked to be enjoying themselves as much as the bouncing audience, with hair flying as they whirled their guitars around in the strobing lights. Even Faris managed a few words in between songs and didn’t look quite as menacing as usual. As they ended the set with a hypnotic rendition of ‘Moving Further Away’, it was clear that they have moved very far away from their original kitschy goth personas of the first album, and instead focussed on creating lush, rolling soundscapes. Perfect gig, perfect album, I am happy.
Setlist:
Changing The Rain
Who Can Say
I Can See Through You
Scarlet Fields
Dive In
Three Decades
Endless Blue
You Said
Sea Within A Sea
Still Life
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Mirror’s Image
Monica Gems
Moving Further Away
(This was literally the only semi-decent photo I got. Damn those atmospheric moody lights!)
In other news this week: I have hit my 52 book challenge for the year (I upped it from 40 when I completed that a couple of months ago) so my book plan now is to finish off my remaining unread books, and then re-read the Harry Potter series. I’m trying not to buy any more in the meantime, but I caved today at the Southbank book market with a cheap copy of Iain Banks’ The Crow Road, plus the new Discworld comes out today so that is an essential purchase. It’s much better than before though, when I had 25 books that I hadn’t yet read!
