Tag Archives: Live Review

This is the first time I’ve seen any of the current wave of European ‘Lady Metal’ bands live. I’ve bought my ticket months ago, which was just as well, since the show had completely sold out a considerable time in advance, with a queue stretching back to Academy 2 an hour before the doors opened.. Earlier at Piccadilly Station on the way in I spotted two teenaged girls wearing Within Temptation T-shirts, which made me worried that I’d be the oldest person there. But the long snaking queues outside the venue contained a trememdous mix of ages from teenaged Goths to middle-aged rockers like myself.

Manchester Academy 1, closed for much of the year, still has the builders in. They’ve now got a stage, a roof and a bar, but the place is still lacking things like toilets, cloakrooms and a proper entrance foyer. We had to enter the building through what will eventually become one of the fire exits, and brave the elements to use the festival-style portakabin toilets outside. One inside, it was a little disorientating to find that they’ve turned things through 90 degrees, with the stage on what had been the left-hand wall, and the bar where the stage used to be.

The support band 69 Eyes didn’t impress a lot, I’m afraid to say. They’re one of those bands who seem to put more effort into image than music; a sort of Ramones-meets Alice Cooper glam-punk look, with one of the guitarists sporting a mohican from circa 1978. The music was pretty forgettable generic metal, with irritating programmed keyboards. Get a real keyboard player, guys!

At 9:10pm they rolled the intro tape, the imaginatively-titled “Intro”, and Within Temptation strode on stage, with Sharon den Adel making a dramatic entrance last of all, wearing an elaborate bright red ballgown.

For the uninitiated, Within Temptation sound a but like the missing link between Enya and Rammstein. Instrumentally they’ve got the symphonic keyboards and crunching metal guitars making a huge wall of sound. On top of that is Sharon den Adel’s remarkable voice and she demonstrates the same range and power on stage as she does in the studio. They can certainly cut it live most of the time, although things faltered a little bit during the single “What Have You Done”, which doesn’t really work live without the guest vocalist Keith Caputo who appeared on the record. Showing a video of him (at least I assume it was him) on the back projection screen seemed just a little bit jarring.

Much of the set, not far short of two hours, came from their two most recent albums, “The Silent Force” and “The Heart of Everything”, with a few older songs I didn’t recognise towards the end. Perhaps their biggest weakess is a lack of variety; many of the songs fall into a similar pattern, very strong melodies with big sweeping choruses,no real guitar solos, but requently a middle eight where the guitars drop out leaving Sharon’s vocals accompanied just by keyboards. In many ways she uses her voice as the lead instrument in the band.

The only real complaint was the mediocre sound mix. While not quite bad enough to ruin the gig, I’ve been to this venue many times when the sound has been an awful lot better than this. Sharon den Adel’s vocals came though clearly enough, as did the keyboards, but the bottom end frequently turned into a mush, with little separation between the guitars, bass and drums. I may just have been at the wrong place, two thirds of the way back, with echoes from the back wall muddying things. Or it may just be that they’re still in the learning curve for the acoustics of this venue.

Still a very good gig, which only suffered in comparison with some of the truly great ones I’ve been to this year.

It’s been a long time. The last time I saw Twelfth Night was the 1983 Reading Festival, when they were the opening act on the Sunday, and the late Geoff Mann was the singer.

I wrote a potted history of the band a few years back on this site. At the time, it looked as though the story was over. Since then, continued interest in their music has seen their entire back catalogue reissued and remastered on CD. And finally the band themselves have come out of retirement and taken the stage once more.

The Albany Theatre is not your typical rock venue; the circular venue looked like a cross between the Globe Theatre and a miniature version of The Roundhouse, and is more used to theatrical productions than rock shows. There was an air of anticipation as we waited for the band to hit the stage; what would they be like after all those years?

The opener “The Ceiling Speaks” dispelled any doubts over whether or not they could cut it live. This was actually the first time I’d ever seen Andy Sears fronting the band, and he cut a compelling figure, both a charismatic frontman and a strong voice. I was impressed with the way he interpreted Geoff Mann’s material; he made the songs his own while keeping to the spirit of the originals; not an easy thing to pull off.

The setlist had everything you could want. The first half ranged through the highlights of their career, from the instrumental “Afghan Red” to their last ever recorded song “Blondon Fair”. For the second half, they played the whole of the “Fact and Fiction” album.

High spots were many; a spine-tingling “First New Day” played solo by Andy Sears on piano, really powerful versions of “Sequences” and “Creepshow”, and an emotional final encore of “Love Song”.

It was also one of the most enthusiastic audiences I’ve seen all year (Who says London audiences are jaded and cynical?). Who would have thought complex prog epics such as “We Are Sane” would turn into singalongs? This made for an incredible atmosphere, and made it one of those gigs that will be remembered for a long time.

It’s a long time since I’ve seen Rush live. I missed their 30th anniversary tour, so the last time I caught them live was the “Hold Your Fire” tour umpty-ump years ago.

This was my second visit of the year to our local Enormodome, the first being Deep Purple back in April. It’s not quite as horrible acoustically as the ghastly Wembley Arena were I last saw the band. In the last couple of years I’ve got used to small gigs where it feels like the band are playing in your front room, so huge arena shows feel a bit strange. To make matters worse, I was right up in the gods (Cygnus X1?), high above Alex Lifeson’s side of the stage.

But big shows tend to make up in sheer spectacle for what they lack in intimacy, and this one was no exception, with extensive use of back projection, lasers and even pyro. On the massive stage, Alex Lifeson had the classic backline made up from a wall of Marshall Stacks. But on the other side of Neil Peart’s immense drumkit, Geddy Lee had a backline of… rotisserie cabinets. Filled with chickens. Not only that, at two points during the show a roadie dressed as a chef came and inspected the chickens to see if they were done yet. I don’t know if the crew ate the chickens after the show, or how many complained “Not chicken again“.

All that would count for nothing if the music wasn’t up to scratch, but Rush didn’t let us down on that score. There was no support, the band choosing to play for no less than three hours, two 90 minute sets either side of an interval. While they’re clearly not young any more, they still have the stamina to keep up a high energy level throughout, and have the chops to deliver the often complex material virtually flawlessly. Geddy Lee can still hit almost all those helium-powered high notes.

They played a lot of material from the new album “Snakes and Arrows”, which came over strongly live, and confirmed that this their best album for at least a decade. The setlist also drew very heavily from their four albums from the first half of the 1980s; “Permanent Waves” through to “Grace Under Pressure”. While some may bemoan the absence of 70s prog epics like “Cygnus-X1″ or “Xanadu”, their 80s output does seem to have withstood the test of time rather better. Certainly for me, the superb renditions of songs like “Subdivisions” and “Distant Early Warning” were among the highlights of the show.

And then there was the drum solo. There are only two people in the world that can play drum solos worth paying money to see. One is the classical percussionist Evelyn Glennie. The other is Neil Peart. He battered away at not just two complete kits’ worth of drums, but all manner of electronic percussion, including what appeared to be an electric xylophone, kicking up a veritable percussive storm which drew the biggest applause of the night.

The triumphant show ended with their only two hit singles, “Spirit of Radio” and “Tom Sawyer”, the latter introduced with a specially commissioned South Park sketch about a Rush tribute band.

Encores saw Lifeson bring out his white Gibson semi-acoustic for the real oldie “A Passage to Bankok” and the instrumental “YYZ”.

And then it was 11pm, and a mad dash across town for the last train home. Where had those three hours gone?

I had serious mixed feelings about this gig. I’d bought my ticket back in May, when both the circumstances and the lineup of the band were very different.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. I’ve expressed my opinions about events in several forums, and won’t repeat it all again. Let’s just say it was a very deliberate choice to go to the gig wearing an Odin Dragonfly T-shirt.

I wasn’t expecting to bump into the man himself on the steps of the venue. But since you’re reading this, you can tell that I did live to tell the tale. He even made a point of shaking hands with me at the end of the gig.

As for the show itself, Fish was on fine form both in humour and in voice throughout. By by the end of the first song, he dispelled any lingering doubts about the shape of his voice following from his bout of laryngitis that caused the postponment of the original gig two weeks earlier, and the energy levels didn’t drop for the next two hours.

The setlist included most of Marillion’s 1988 album “Clutching at Straws” along with four songs from the new album 13th Star, with a few other favourites from Fish’s near 20-year solo career thrown in for good measure. I can’t remember the complete setlist from the last time he played Manchester, but I don’t think there was a single song common to both nights. I think that says something about the strength of the body of work he’s produced over the past quarter century.

High spots were too many to mention; of the new songs ‘Machmal’ packs a very powerful punch, ‘Circle Line’ and ‘Square Go’ rock hard, and ‘Dark Star’ is even more intense live than on record. I have to say that him singing some of the angriest lines straight in my face was just a little intimidating. That T shirt may have something to do with it. I’d have loved to have heard more of the new album played, but the Clutching at Straws songs came over fantastically well live too. (I still love that album, even though it’s two decades old).

The band were tight and well-drilled. Frank Usher may look old, but he reeled off some superbly fluid solos from that battered guitar. I’ve got into trouble for criticising his playing on Marillion oldies before; after all, there’s only one Steve Rothery. Probably wisely, he didn’t try impersonate Rothers and play the original solos note-for-note, but creatively reinterpreted them in his own style. And his playing on Cliché was mesmerising. Chris Johnson seems to have fitted in well; although it was wierd hearing him singing all the female backing vocal parts.

One of the most memorable gigs of the year, for all the right reasons. If it didn’t quite top Marillion at The Forum or Mostly Autumn at Bury, it came very, very close.

Friday night saw The Reasoning’s first gig in central London, at the Borderline.

The Borderline is a small club just off Charing Cross Road, quite a bit smaller than Crewe Limelight where I’d seem them back in April. As seems usual for just about every gig I go to nowadays, I recognised quite a few familiar faces in the crowd, both from previous Reasoning gigs and from the Mostly Autumn fanbase. I also put a lot of faces to names for people from the Reasoning forum and TheStorm mailing list. By the time the band hit the stage, the place was pretty much packed.

It didn’t take very long to show just how far this band have progressed in the eight short months since their first gig in Swansea. They’ve really gelled as a live act now, and have the perfect combination of tightness, energy and emotional intensity. The band were clearly enjoying being on stage, and feeding off the tremendous enthusiasm of the crowd. They were also blessed with a good sound mix, which meant you could hear every instrument and each voice clearly. I noticed Gareth’s vocal contributions a lot more this time.

Naturally songs from “Awakening” made up the bulk of the set, although their version of Karnataka’s magnificent “Talk to Me” is still one of the high points of the show. They also introduced two new songs from the forthcoming album “Dark Angel”, the title track, and “Breaking the Fourth Wall”. Both sounded impressive on first listening, the former reminding me a little bit (but not too much) of Dream Theater. This augers well for the new album.

In short, The Reasoning rock. If they keep up this momentum (and I’m sure they will), they’ll be playing much bigger venues than this in a year or two’s time.