update: unfortunately embedding has now been disabled for these videos
The hair stood up on the back of my neck watching Arcade Fire play Reading on BBC 3 the other night. The band has uploaded the entire show to YouTube.
update: unfortunately embedding has now been disabled for these videos
The hair stood up on the back of my neck watching Arcade Fire play Reading on BBC 3 the other night. The band has uploaded the entire show to YouTube.
My guest pass for the Rogue’s Gallery festival also gave me access to the second day of the Analog Festival.
Three bands I’d never heard of before were on the bill. The concert started with Liars, an American band with an Australian singer. I’ve filed them under Z for Zappa with their experimental rock sound. Not my kind of thing, but frontman Angus was theatrical enough to please the photographer in me.
Efterklang made me want to hear more. Dressed in folk garb the Danes came across as a happier version of Arcade Fire – with just a tiny hint of Up With People.
The somewhat older band Tortoise followed. Instrumental rock with two drum kits in the foreground. They were a little too jazzy for me at the start, so I wandered around taking pictures of the beautiful setting of the festival, but their rhythms became a little tighter as their set progressed which drew me back in.
Where do rockbands go when they grow old? The small room upstairs at the Paradiso.
It’s unfair perhaps and it must smart, but The Church soldiers on. All the good bands do. Whether you perform in front of thousands or in someone’s living room, you play as if it’s your last show.
I go see young bands, I go see the big names, I go to club gigs, I – reluctantly – enter stadiums to watch the megas. And I get jaded about concerts and complain I’m not getting what I need from them, most of the time.
Young bands especially, I find, have no stage craft and no mystique. (There’s always exceptions – Arcade Fire for example have plenty of both.) I want bands and their frontmen in particular to make me believe. Believe them. Believe something. I like to see bands play because they need to, not because they want to.
I go see bands full of expectations and come away disappointed a lot of the time. So when I went to see The Church I expected them well past their heyday, coasting on past glory. Instead I watched four guys soldiering on with more fire in the belly than a lot of the new ‘The’-bands put together. Overcoming ridiculous technical problems, they played blistering versions of songs from their vast repertoire.
Frontman Steve Kilbey, past the pretty but sporting a distinguished bearded look, still oozes star quality despite the weary, dog-tired I’m-too-old-for-this-game vibe that surrounds him. He commanded the room. How do I know this? He asked people to lay off the ciggies because they hurt his throat. Dutch people don’t like to be told ‘no’. But they obeyed. And when the pauses between songs became longer and longer while the drummer and techs tried to rid the stage of a persistent buzzing, nobody complained. Kilbey made up stories to pass time, people listened.
I left the Paradiso floating several feet above the ground and with a keen, renewed, interest in the band. I spent the weekend gorging information, properly obsessing and hungry for the chime of Peter Koppes and Marty Willson-Piper’s riffs.
Next time, give them back the big room, Paradiso.
In celebration of the new Arcade Fire album ‘Neon Bible‘ (leaked this week), here’s one of its songs played live in the KCRW studios. I could not resist ordering the ‘deluxe edition’ and am currently hunting down tickets for their show in Utrecht in April.
2005 goes down in my books as the year I stopped buying CDs. My budget had to give somewhere and rather than be a scrooge on food, I cut down from my usual 80 CDs a year to virtually none (‘less than 10’). Torrents be praised. Do I feel guilty? Not really. Most of my money and time (and time, as you all know, is money) has gone and still goes into the music industry anyway.
And yet I can’t cut down completely. Sometimes I get these urges, these little obsessions. Last week it was ‘I have to have everything and anything ever put out by Arcade Fire’. Why? Gorgeous packaging, that’s why. I mean, look at this. The scans don’t do the actual product justice. The ‘Neighborhood #2’ 7″ for example has a fold out sleeve, printed inside and out with Art Deco/Tim Burtonesque imagery.
{ click click }
Since they’re only starting out it’s fairly easy to obtain ‘everything and anything’, except that elusive first single, only 1500 of which were pressed. So if anyone can give me a lead on a copy of the ‘Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)’ 7″…
Best of my 2004
(records I played the most, no rationale involved)
* Declan O’Rourke – Since Kyabram
* U2 – How to dismantle an atomic bomb
* The Killers – Hot Fuss
* Robi Draco Rosa – Mad Love
Best of 2004
(records I should play more)
* Nick Cave – Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus
* Morrissey – You are the quarry
* 90 day men – Panda Park
* Nancy Sinatra – Nancy Sinatra
* Leonard Cohen – Dear Heather
* The Dears – No Cities Left
* Ben Christophers – Spaces in Between
* Tim Booth – Bone
* Scissor Sisters – Scissor Sisters
* Interpol – Antics
Best re-release / compilation
* Japan – back catalogue
* Kylie Minogue – Ultimate Kylie
* Virgin Prunes – back catalogue
Disappointments
(records I wanted to play, but didn’t live up to expectation)
* George Michael – Patience
* Marianne Faithful – Before the poison
I don’t get it
(records other people recommended)
* Arcade Fire – Funeral
Eclipsed
(records that didn’t survive the hype)
* Franz Ferdinand – Franz Ferdinand