The Jesus and Mary Chain - 7 March 2016

The Jesus and Mary Chain

Alvvays

The Forum

Monday 7 March 2016

$95

Due Reverence

The author in his JAMC merch

Sets of siblings in rock bands do not generally share happy histories. From the Everly Brothers, the Beach Boys, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Bee Gees, The Kinks and of course Oasis, fraternal friction tends to be the rule rather than the exception.

Added to this list, somewhere between the Everly brothers and the Gallagher brothers, came the Reid brothers – Jim and William from Scottish band The Jesus and Mary Chain, who were reportedly every bit as fractious as their American and Manchester counterparts, just with more gel in their hair.

Musically, The Jesus and Mary Chain overlaid 60s bubblegum pop melodies with slathers of fizzing, crackling guitar feedback and a disdainful sneering attitude, creating in the process a unique sound.

Michaelangelo reportedly said that ‘every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor is to discover it.’ The Jesus and Mary Chain offer a similar challenge to the listener; buried somewhere within the marble screen of screeching guitar and bass drum thump is a beautiful pop song just waiting to get out, the listener just has to discover it. It is the tension between these two styles that creates the trademark Jesus and Mary Chain sound, and also allows you to simultaneously shimmy and bang your head while listening to them.

This sound was best expressed on their 1985 debut album, Psychocandy, and this tour is ostensibly to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of that landmark release – it’s just taken until the 31^st year to reach Australia.

The first time I saw The Jesus and Mary Chain was also one of the early dates I went on with my now wife, Angela. It was the Darklands tour in late 1987 or early 1988 at The Metro at the top of Bourke Street. At the time Angela was studying performance and classical singing and possessed reasonably refined tastes for someone in their early 20s. Quite aside from the tuneless noise, she was appalled that a band would not only play in such a dense fog – we were only a few metres from the stage and we could barely make them out – but that they would have their backs to the audience for most of the show. Being what I thought of as more savvy, but in reality was probably just that I more susceptible to fashionable tastes, I thought they were brilliant.

Needless to say, Angela didn’t join me when they returned to Australia in the mid 1990s to play The Palace in St Kilda in support of their Stoned and Dethroned album, and nor was she joining me for this gig.

Time has not softened her stance on The Jesus and Mary Chain, which I see as a testament to the power of their artistic vision.

On a side note, I’m beginning to fear for the fate of the Forum. The second JAMC show in Melbourne was at The Palace in St Kilda, which eventually burnt down and is now a car park. The venue for that first show, The Metro, which was subsequently taken over by the team at the Palace, is now an empty shell awaiting destruction. Is it the Palace group who are unlucky or is it possible that the Jesus and Mary Chain bring a curse down on any Melbourne venue at which they play?

Alvvays

This show coincided with the opening night of Virgin Melbourne Fashion Week, so it was important, I felt, to dress with appropriate aplomb. When I go to watch Hawthorn play, I wear brown and gold, so it seemed only right that I should don an all-black ensemble to see The Jesus and Mary Chain. One never really grows out of their Goth tendencies.

Before we got the chance to revel in the louche lolly shop of Psychocandy, however, there was a support set from Canadian popsters, Alvvays – I had arrived too late to see the first act Grinding Eyes.

‘Alvvays’ is apparently pronounced ‘Always’, but why it is not spelt that way I couldn’t say – presumably a cultural reference, joke or generational thing I don’t get. It is, however, in keeping with a recent trend in young bands to use the letter ’v’ in places it would not normally have any business being – Chvrches and Wavves being other examples.

A five-piece band, they play a variant on melodic, jangling guitar pop. Pretty good actually, although the sound was bit trebly where I was standing. I put that down to the mix or The Forum’s uneven acoustics, but the band’s melodies were catchy and the songs skipped along pleasantly.

I later listened to the album and could pick out a couple of the songs they played; Atop a Cake, Adult Diversion and Archie, Marry Me.

Lead singer Molly Rankin was wearing a peach jumpsuit, so she had obviously been alerted to the opening of Fashion Week. At one point she congratulated us on not using our phones at gigs, but perhaps people were just saving their battery for The Jesus and Mary Chain. If so, they would be sorely disappointed, because as the roadies readied the stage for the headline act, the thick Kilburn fog started to blow in to thwart any would be iPhone photographers.

The Jesus and Mary Chain

The Jesus ad Mary Chain - they're in there somewhere

Those with good eyesight could make out in the gloaming the shadowy figures of the JAMC band members walking on stage. I detected the outline of William’s untamed fro. Jim Reid stood in what light there was at the front of the stage and laid out the itinerary – there would be a short set of songs not from Psychocandy, then the band would take a two minute break, and return to play the album in full.

At which point the familiar chug of April Skies started up and we were away. If Alvvays were a bit trebly, the sound people had overcompensated for JAMC who sounded a bit bassy. That’s not such a bad thing for April Skies, and by the time its mid-tempo chug had quickened to the faster chug of Head On, my ears had nearly accustomed. The short opening set included a selection of JAMC evergreen tracks including a euphoric Some Candy Talking and a piercing and clamorous Reverence.

Reverence was infamous upon release for magnificent opening lyrical gambit, “I wanna die like Jesus Christ, I wanna die on a bed of spikes…I wanna die like JFK, I wanna die on a sunny day” delivered in Jim Reid’s distinctive sneer. However, it should also be remembered for its tumultuous marriage of ferocious fuzz guitar with techno dance beats, a combination U2 also successfully employed on Achtung Baby around the same time, just not quite as manically.

In any case, it took us lurching into the break in a tumult of glorious guitar noise, before Jim Reid announced they were off to ‘have a cup of tea’. There was a time when I assumed any food or drink item mentioned in a JAMC song, i.e. ‘candy’, was a drug reference, so I don’t know if the ‘cup of tea’ in question was a metaphor for a traditional rock ‘n’ roll ‘pick me up’, or a sign of their dotage.

Sadly they hadn’t played anything from Stoned and Dethroned, but mercifully, nor had they played anything from Munki.

Before the lights lifted, such as they were, the distinctive opening beat of Just Like Honey signaled the beginning of the Psychocandy set. Molly Rankin from Alvvays stood to the side to add the requisite ‘honeyed’ tones to the title’s refrain – a role filled on one famous occasion by another well-known blond, Scarlett Johanssen.  

Bobby Gillespie of Primal Scream famously played drums on Psychocandy, and for all I could tell he was behind the kit for this gig as well. The minimal lighting and a dry ice machine set to max made the stage virtually impenetrable. I could make out a guitarist, bass player and a drummer to round out the brothers’ sound, but if not for Jim’s distinctive vocals and William’s coiffure, it could have been anyone up there.

The band worked methodically through the album in its original order, moving from the lush Just Like Honey to the blistering The Living End and the even more abrasive Taste The Floor. Any thoughts that this was going to be an overly reverential homage to former glories were blown aside by the sheer noise and acerbic barrage of these tracks and In a Hole.

There was minimal break between songs, and as expected, no banter, bar the occasional ‘thank you’ with Jim Reid raising a hand in acknowledgement to the crowd.

There was a core group of moshers down the front and by the time we moved into ‘side 2’ and Never Understand, the security team were handing out bottles of water to anyone who raised their arm. I was up near the mixing desk with lots of other middle-aged types, and appreciated the break afforded us by the relatively quiet strum and slow plod of Sowing Seeds. Any relief was short-lived however, with a blast of William Reid’s industrial chainsaw guitar on My Little Undergound.

As on the record, You Trip Me Up was a masterpiece of melody amid the maelstrom, while closing track It’s So Hard was extended into a ten-minute vortex of spiky feedback and reverb. What better way to finish.

There was no encore; in a way they’d played it at the beginning of the show, but really, where do you go after Psychocandy? Other than Darklands of course, and it is the 30^th anniversary of that album next year. Already looking forward to it.

Setlist

April Skies

Head On

Blues From a Gun

Some Candy Talking

Nine Million Rainy Days

Between Planets

Reverence

- - - - - - - - - -

Just Like Honey

The Living End

Taste the Floor

The Hardest Walk

Cut Dead

In a Hole

Taste of Cindy

Never Understand

Inside Me

Sowing Seeds

My Little underground

You Trip Me Up

Something’s Wrong

It’s So Hard

Encore – The blow-ups between brothers in bands is well documented – only Bros, the Finns of Split Enz and the Youngs of AC-DC seem immune. But what of sisters? There seem to be very few stories of sisterly spats or sororal fallout. Is this because unlike brothers, sisters can operate together artistically in sibling harmony? Or do they just keep their fights to themselves? Or even more bizarre, resolve them?

There have been a number of bands with sisters; The Breeders, The Coors, All Saints, Haim, Heart, The Bangles, Stonefield, Vika and Linda Bull, the Webb Sisters, Tegan and Sara, to say nothing of The Andrews Sisters, The Pointer Sisters, Sister Sledge et al. (The Scissor Sisters and Twisted Sister are not included; the former doesn’t contain any siblings and the latter doesn’t even contain any females – just men in drag.)

There is surprisingly little scuttlebutt and gossip from the sisterhood. Perhaps it just that the music press doesn’t cover female bands or musicians with the same avid attention as their male counterparts. So come on girls, a couple of punches thrown in public, some strategic hair pulling or sniping in the press and your band could be headed for legendary status.

Teeth & Tongue – 28 August 2015

Teeth & Tongue

Pearls

The Ocean Party

Estonian House, West Brunswick

Friday 28 August 2015

$30

Grid Girl

Jade McInally and Jess Cornelius belt out a song
- sensible shoes not shown.
photo by Anna Madden published on planetartsmel.com

At what point, I wonder, does fandom crossover and become stalking? This is my third Teeth & Tongue gig in a 12-month period, so I must be getting close to the line. In my defence, one of those shows was a support slot for Courtney Barnett, and this one at Estonian House is quite close to home, heck it’s virtually on my way home from work, so it would be rude not to turn up.

Even so, a casual observer might conclude that I have a ‘thing’ for singer, Jess Cornelius. They’d be more or less correct too, notwithstanding an age difference that would render it a bit wrong, if not actually illegal, in some states. However, so long as I don’t squeal and faint like a pre-pubescent teen at a One Direction concert, or give this piece a title that references biting, licking or any other acts associated with teeth and tongues, I can probably carry on with the charade that my infatuation with the band is entirely musical. Hmmm, perhaps I should rethink the ‘Grid Girl’ title then?

Teeth & Tongue’s Grids was one of my favourite Australian albums of 2014, along with The Church’s Further Deeper, #1 Dads’ About Face and Total Control’s Typical System. When I say ‘Australian’ I mean it in the traditional sense, in that Jess Cornelius, the songwriter and creative driving force of the band, is from New Zealand. But she is based in Melbourne and her band members are Australian, so they qualify under the Crowded House clause.

Together with collaborators Marc Regueiro-McKelvie and Damian Sullivan, she has produced an album that blends elements of torch song with irresistible 80s alt-pop. Cornelius has a rich, deep voice that lends grandeur and intensity to slower, keyboard led songs such as I Feel Good and adds power to the guitar driven numbers like Easy Living. Equal parts Ute Lemper, Goldfrapp and Siouxsie Sioux, her voice provides sass and strength while clever vocal arrangements with staccato backing add drama and lift the songs from a standard rock setting.

Estonian House is a beautiful old art deco cinema in West Brunswick, converted into a pop-up music venue by the Shadow Electric crew who run the Abbotsford Convent venue. Whatever architectural merit it may possess, however, the mix for first band on the bill, The Ocean Party, was terrible – any subtlety in their sound was rendered impossible to hear from the echoey reverb as their chiming guitar sound filled the cavernous, half-full space only to double back on itself. The mix sounded as messy as their projected backdrop looked – a Joan Miroesque rendering of their name. Still, underneath all of that they sounded interesting enough – sort of Church-esque – so worth checking out perhaps in a smaller venue or via Spotify.

The Ocean Party - photo by Dave Reece, published on speakertv.com

Another defect of the venue, or just the organisation of it, was the bar system. Four staff, one long queue. In fact I spent the best part of Pearls’ set in a long queue that snaked around the venue. The sound for Pearls was equally poor – muddy and flat, so it detracted somewhat from their performance. Not so their backdrop that was bold and bright and depicted a grumpy tabby cat wearing a pink feather boa. The lead singer/guitarist, Ryan Caesar, admitted in between songs that it was indeed his cat.

Pearls is a four-piece with Caesar on guitar and vocals, Ellice Blakeney on drums, Cassandra Kiely on organ and vocals and James Payne on keyboards.

Since I’d last seen Pearls supporting Oh Mercy at the Gasometer Hotel, I’d bought their album, so was familiar with most of their material. They opened with two tracks from the record, STTH (Straight Through The Heart), and Albion, two layered, shimmering songs, and closed their set with Pretend You’re Mine and Big Shot, the two bookends of their album, both big stomping glam rock numbers and perhaps their most striking tracks.

Big Shot

I decided to stand at the front for Teeth & Tongue in the hope that the sound would be better. Besides, I like being close to the performers and there seemed little danger of a violent mosh pit developing to Teeth & Tongue’s mix of 80s guitar pop and cabaret ballads. 

It was a low key opening with Jess Cornelius wandering on stage to sing the first song solo. It wasn't a song I knew, so it was either brand new or so old that the band didn't know it. Perhaps the band were just finishing their ciggies in the band room or watching the footy – Collingwood was beating Geelong. In the notes that I tapped out on my iPhone, I've typed 'I Want You' as a clue to the title based on the most oft repeated phrase in the song.

The band joined her as the song ended and they launched into More Than This, The Party Is You and Easy Living, all strong, up-tempo numbers from Grids. On stage were Cornelius (guitar, keyboards and vocals), Marc Regueiro-Mckelvie (guitar and keyboards), Damian Sullivan (bass and keyboards), James Harvey (drums and vocals) and Jade McInally (vocals and percussion). 

Jess was wearing a shimmering silver top with matching tight ankle length skirt, which I wouldn't necessarily feel the need to mention except that she teamed this, not with silver stilettos as you might expect, but with what looked like suede flats with a Velcro strap buckle. Evidently comfort and practicality were more important to her than a commitment to style. The band all wore matching silver Bomber jackets with a stylised T&T logo on the back – recalling 70s pop stars Sherbet during their Howzat era.

The show had been advertised as a 'musical and video collaboration' featuring large scale projections from video and lighting artists. Ocean Party and Pearls had just the one image behind them for their respective sets, but for Teeth & Tongue we got the promised moving pictures.

They were largely simple images with bold primary colours based around a food theme - exotic drinks being sucked up through straws, eggs and apples being peeled, and at one stage a Rubiks Cube puzzle being solved. We never saw the face of the protagonist, just their hands and the items. It wasn't necessarily an extravaganzas, such as the Sydney Opera House projections for the Vivid festival, but it was at least a diverting backdrop to the band’s performance.

Just as the video montage was more elaborate for Teeth & Tongue, so too was the sound much clearer, crisper and indeed, louder. I don't know if it was a case of the PA system for the main band being better, as has long been the practice in music, or just the room filling up, but there was a marked improvement. 

The bulk of the set was drawn from Grids, including perennial highlight, Good Man, and Newborn that brought to the fore the supporting vocals of Jade McInally. In addition to the album material, they also played recent one-off single Cupcake, a cover of The Motels' Total Control – Cornelius has the sort of sultry voice that can do justice to Martha Davies’ smokey early 80s classic - and a slowed down, stripped back version of Sad Sun from the Tambourine album. They finished the set with a new song that presumably contained a sample from another song – though not one I knew – for the people standing around me all joined in at one point. 

For the encore they played Mess You Up, one of the slow, sensual numbers from Grids, bringing to a close a pretty good gig. 

Teeth & Tongue in vivid colour - photo sourced from Nyk Lee on Twitter

Setlist

(I Want You)?

More Than This

The Party Is You

Easy Living

I Feel Good

Good Man

Family Home

Cupcake

Total Control

Newborn

Sad Sun

?

Mess You Up

Teeth & Tongue

Montero

Howler

Saturday 28 June 2014

Although Grids had been out for a couple of months, this show at Howler was to be its official launch. My wife Angela likes the album too so she was joining me for the gig, as were a few friends we’d talked into coming.

The idea of seeing a fresh young local band seemed like a good idea at the time we booked tickets, but upon checking the line-up on Howler’s website we saw that Teeth & Tongue weren’t scheduled to come on until 11pm!  Perhaps our younger selves would have relished this timetable, but for 40-somethings – and older in some cases, well my case – with children at home, this was a salient reminder that our lifestyle no longer correlated to the new music scene.

To make things worse, it was a wet and icy cold evening in Melbourne and we’d all left nice warm homes to get to the gig. As a 20-year I would have barely registered the weather, but on this night it presented a compelling reason to stay home. Had we not pre-purchased tickets it’s unlikely we would have made the effort. For this reason we left it as late as possible and so missed the early support acts.

As we arrived, however, Montero were on stage and going for it. A six piece band, half of them throttled their instruments and banged their heads, their long miens shaking wildly, while the other wore short hair and glasses and nodded sagely as they played. It looked like Spinal Tap had merged with Devo.

The lead singer, who I believe is the Montero of the band’s name, looked a little like Kurt Cobain and was wearing an overcoat – a useful enough garment outside, especially given the weather, but less essential in the hot band room at Howler. Still, what is rock and roll if not a forum for the grand, absurd fashion gesture?

The venue was crowded and our late arrival meant that we were stuck up near the back. This wasn’t such a problem except that I found it hard to see, and at times hard to hear over the chatter from those loitering near the bar area, particularly during the quieter numbers such as Boredom.

Still, the band’s performance was good. They opened with Sad Sun from previous album, Tambourine before playing some of the material from Grids. Laura Jean joined Jess Cornelius as guest vocalist for Newborn, as she does on the record, but she looked decidedly uncomfortable on stage, almost reluctant to join in. That might just be her normal stage persona, but she couldn’t get off stage quick enough once the song ended.

For the encore they played a great cover of The Motels’ Total Control, then reprised Sad Sun, this time slower and pared back and ended with The Party Is You. They even returned for a final song, the haunting Going South.

It was a polished performance by the band, but the circumstances of the night – the weather, the packed room and the fact that the friends I’d talked into coming evidently weren’t enjoying the band to the same degree as me – did temper my own enjoyment somewhat. I vowed to see them again when possible. In the meantime I picked up a vinyl edition of Grids to celebrate my recently acquired turntable.

Calexico - 3 March 2016

Calexico

Krista Polvere

Hamer Hall

Wednesday 3 March 2016

$70

Sit Down and Be Counted

My mum and dad didn’t play music all that often when I was growing up. When they did it was often bagpipe marching band music, The Seekers or a cast recording of a popular musical such as Oliver, My Fair Lady or The Sound of Music. No wonder I later found solace in the Sex Pistols.

One of the few records of theirs that I did like was by Herp Albert and the Tijuana Brass – big band Tex-Mex music built around Herp Albert’s lyrical trumpet. It was lively and catchy with rapidly strummed guitars, skipping vibraphone rolls and jaunty blasts of brass. Most importantly to my young ears, there were no bagpipes.

Having this music in my childhood meant that I was predisposed to like Calexico when I first heard them supporting Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl in 2003. They were reminiscent of the Tijuana Brass with its vivacious brass reveilles, but also with electric guitars, drums and a slightly twisted mariachi feel. I bought their current album at that time, Feast of Wire, and have followed them more or less ever since.

They’ve toured Australia a couple of times since then and I’ve seen some rollicking gigs at the Corner Hotel and the Prince Bandroom. In Australia to play Bluesfest in Byron Bay and WOMAD in Adelaide, they’re squeezing in a few shows in between, including this one at Hamer Hall. It is perhaps an incongruous venue for them, but when my friend John said he was getting tickets, I thought why not. As with Sufjan a few nights earlier, our wives joined us.

Krista Polvere

Before Calexico, however, was support act Krista Polvere, a local singer-songwriter. When I checked her out via the usual sites I learned that Ryan Adams was a big fan and had even played on one of her albums. So we thought we’d try and get there in time to hear her.

We were only three or four rows from the front so we had excellent seats. Krista walked out wearing what I can only describe as a teddy – not of the small bear variety, but the lingerie type garment – a sheer, loose top and shorts combo. The sort of thing you might wear when you excuse yourself so you can ‘slip into something more comfortable.’ With her flowing brunette locks and long legs, she looked like Lana Del Ray in sleepwear.

I don’t know if this type of look is what attracted Ryan Adams – he’s only human after all – but his influence became apparent when she started playing, for between every song she felt the need to gush at considerable length about nothing very much at all…very Ryanesque in other words. Most likely she was very nervous, and full marks to anyone prepared to get on a stage and share the fruits of their art with a room full of strangers. Particularly such a big room. She admitted to having been plied with wine by Calexico, and indeed she still had her glass with her on stage, so perhaps her loquaciousness was just brought on by the house sav blanc. 

In fact the problems began before she’d even started. She walked on stage and picked up her guitar from the stand, then took two or three minutes to tune it, all the while talking about what a privilege it was to play such a venue. If it was such a big deal, wouldn’t you make sure that you’d undertaken the most basic level of preparation in advance, i.e. tuning your guitar? Presumably she’d had all day to do it. Despite that, her first song, Bluebird was quite interesting. Her voice was strong and she wove an interesting melody over her acoustic guitar playing.

The rest of her set wasn’t as strong unfortunately. Not bad as such, just not particularly unique. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. She's operating in the country tradition and she was true to that style. She can certainly sing however, and perhaps at her own show or with a full band, her songs would have more bite. Or perhaps if I hadn’t been quite so distracted by her legs I’d have listened more intently. 

Calexico

Calexico at Hamer Hall - photo by Anna Madden published on thewanderinglamb.com

Joey Burns is Calexico’s lead singer and songwriter, but live, the focal point of the band, at least from the audience’s perspective, is Jacob Valenzuela. When he’s not playing trumpet, vibraphone, piano accordian or taking the lead vocal on a couple of numbers, he’s shaking some form of a percussive rattle, all the while moving from side to side with such fluid grace that you wonder if it’s just the music getting to him or whether he function on some inner biorhythm that only he possesses. You can’t take your eyes off him.

They opened with Frontera, a typically swaggering number that you might hear in a western soundtrack. It is driven by a scattered rhythms and swift acoustic strum through which a single guitar line picks out a path, until dual trumpets intervene with a short, rising exclamation. This was followed by Falling From the Sky, the opening number for new album, Edge of the Sun, that features a descending synthesiser motif and showcases the band’s melodic pop sensibility.

There were seven musicians on stage, and instruments for several more, with most of the band swapping every song or so. I counted more than a dozen microphones set up to capture brass and percussion sounds as well as backing vocals. Their next gig after this one is scheduled for Meanyian Town Hall, a small country town in south western Victoria – I’m not sure the venue will be large enough to fit all of the equipment, let alone the band and audience.

This was an unusual gig in that Calexico’s lively Tex-Mex music, propelled as it is by racing rhythms and layers of percussion punctuated by blasts of brass, seemed particularly unsuited to a stilted, sit-down venue like Hamer Hall. If there is one common reaction to Calexico’s music, it is the need to dance, to shuffle and sway – it is a kinesthetic urge and you do it without even realising. So to sit through a Calexico gig felt unnatural, even wrong, like moshing at a Bach cello recital.

Sure I could have stood, but no one else was standing and I didn’t have the bravado to be the first. When two women in the second row did try, they weren’t howled down, but no one joined them, and they were left conspicuously upright, dancing awkwardly while everyone watched.

Guitarist Jairo Zavala*, uber cool with his pointed sideburns and casually brilliant playing style, seemed perplexed that we remained seated. He kept motioning to the most likely sorts to get up. In our collective defence, I’ll just say that in addition to good acoustics, Hamer Hall has extremely comfortable seats. Once you’re comfortably ensconced, you don’t stand unnecessarily. If my couch at home was that snug, I’d never leave the house.

The acoustics, as mentioned, were perfect and we heard every instrument – and there were plenty of them – with extreme clarity. Only Burns’ vocals seemed unusually hushed. What we couldn’t hear, however, were the raucous shouts of people having a good time, the clink of drinks and the bonhomie of people singing along that you would normally associate with a Calexico gig. Perhaps that’s why Burns sang softly – he was appreciating that for once he didn’t have to sing over people.

Where Hamer Hall was perfect for Sufjan Stevens, it didn’t necessarily work to Calexico’s advantage. Nor was it full – the entire top section remained empty. Having said that, I enjoyed being up close watching the musicians. Calexico is very much a collective and this was evident in their on-stage interaction, the way they enjoyed each other’s playing. I particularly liked watching drummer John Convertino, whose understated style and subtle touches added volumes to the overall sound.

The bulk of the set was made up of tracks from their latest album, Edge of the Sun, with the rest drawn from right across their career, going as far back as 1998’s The Black Light album. Early highlights were Cumbia de donde, an ebullient brass and percussive driven party piece from Edge of the Sun, and Splitter, a dynamic track from Algiers. We also heard the moody Black Heart from Feast of Wire and the evocative Two Silver Trees from Carried To Dust.

When the mariachi band stylings of Crystal Frontier halted and the band left the stage, the audience rose in an instantaneous standing ovation. As they returned, John and I tried to linger in our standing position, but everyone around us promptly sat down so we too resumed our seats. We can say we tried.   

As it happened, the first song of the encore was Follow the River, a mid-paced track from the new album that is fine in its own way, but hardly a party starter. We would have looked particularly awkward trying to maintain a steady shuffle to the end. Things picked up however, with the spirited Beneath the City of Dreams, before they ended with old favourites Corona and Guero Canelo with Jacob Valenzuela urging us to join in the call and response repetition of the title.

Another standing ovation ensued as the band took their bows. The reserve of Melbourne audiences is well known, but the band must have thought it was a little perverse that we’d sat stonily through nearly two hours of rug cutting, shoe shifting, toe tapping, hip swaying, vibrant music and then stood up as soon as it stopped. It was like musical chairs in reverse.

They may not have played many of my favourite tracks, but with nine or 10 albums over 20 years, that was always likely to be the case. I did, however, relish being so close to the band with no one pushing in front of me. And the main thing is I was quite comfy. Sue even managed to get me a setlist from guitarist Jairo Zavala when he returned to unplug his various guitar pedals and tools. That’s it in the photo above.

setlist

Frontera/Trigger                 

Falling from the Sky

Cumbia de Donde

Maybe Monday

Splitter

Roka

Black Heart

Bullets and Rocks

Minas de Combre

Inspiracion

World Undone

When the Angels Played

Fortune Teller

Moon Never Rises

Two Silver Trees / Stray

Alone Again or

Crystal Frontier

- - - - - - - -  - -

Follow the River

Beneath the City of Dreams

Corona

Guero Canelo


* Thanks to Mark for highlighting my error with the guitarist's name and advising the correct name: Jairo Zavala.

Mark also highlighted that I made no reference to Calexico's wardrobe. He has a point, particularly given that the show took place during Virgin Melbourne Fashion Week and that I'd made such a point about Krista Polvere's outfit. While Krista's ensemble might indeed have warranted her a place on the runway, not so for Calexico who donned not a uniform as such, but a variation on the denim trouser teamed with black shirt look. Smart, pragmatic musician outfits, but not particularly noteworthy.

Arcade Fire - 22 January 2014

Arcade Fire

Sidney Myer Music Bowl

Wednesday 22 January 2014

$100

Arcade On Fire

It was a hot, balmy night in Melbourne, perfect for Arcade Fire at the Bowl as well as the men’s quarter final of the Australian Open –  Roger Federer was playing Andy Murray just over the river at Rod Laver Arena.

Win Butler - photo by Jodie Meier - muscifeeds.com

There was a friendly, good humoured buzz as fans for both events blended in the city before parting at Princes Bridge to stroll down their respective sides of the Yarra River. Even without the river dividing us, it wouldn’t take a social ethnographer to work out who was going to which event, for although both groups exhibited a certain middle class prosperity – enough that they could each fork out $100 plus for a night out – there is very little crossover in the fashion of hipsters and tennis fans. One set was wearing black denim and some variant of tour t-shirt, while the other opted for chinos or pressed shorts teamed with polo shirts, and the optional extra of a flag depicting the white cross of the Swiss or the Scottish St Andrew’s cross worn as a cape. Plus the tennis fans had better tans.

The Sidney Myer Music Bowl is a large outdoor amphitheatre on the edge of the Botanical Gardens. It hosts free orchestral concerts every year and is famous for The Seekers homecoming show in 1967 that attracted 200,000 people. It is also where ABBA played on their 1977 Australian tour. It is infamous for an AC-DC show in 1980 when people without tickets brought down the fences and there were battles between fans and police. That coupled with complaints about the volume brought about a ban on concerts at the Bowl that lasted more than 10 years.

There is seating for a couple of thousand people at the front and general admission for several more thousand on the lawn behind. From my perspective, you either get a seat at a Bowl gig, or you reconsider going. Not that I mind standing for the show, but I’ve outgrown the early queuing and pushing and shoving required to get a good vantage spot in the general admission area, and worse, keeping it. So I was happy that I secured a seat in the front section for this gig.

All the usual members of my concert cohort were on holidays so I was on my own for this one. Having a seat meant that I didn’t have to arrive early, so I missed the support act, a DJ named Diplo, but I was keen to see Arcade Fire who I had missed on their only previous tour of Australia.

The Butler Bros. - photo by Jodie Meier - musicfeeds.com

Arcade Fire were here on the back of Reflektor – a sprawling dance oriented double album produced by LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy. After the massive critical and commercial success of The Suburbs, which won the Grammy Award for album of the year in 2011 – Arcade Fire were in the enviable, or unenviable position, depending on how you look at it, of having to follow-up a career defining album. Like Radiohead after OK Computer, R.E.M after Automatic For the People, U2 after The Joshua Tree, or Bowie after every album in the 1970s, Arcade Fire elected to follow The Suburbs by changing their sound entirely. This is a strategy that carries some commercial risk but when the band is adventurous enough and good enough, like Arcade Fire and their predecessors, they end up creating another classic. Reflektor is just that – a record that with its emphasis on rhythms is quite different, but every bit as good as The Suburbs and Funeral. Plus it has Bowie doing a guest vocal on the title track.

The lights dimmed, the intro music faded and the familiar bass rumble and percussive keyboard motif of Rebellion sounded to welcoming cheers. Stage lights picked out the members of Arcade Fire wearing oversized papier-mache caricature bobble heads of themselves, as seen in the film clip for Reflektor. The audience were just getting their legs moving and beginning to mouth the words to the song when the show was interrupted by a group of stage invaders wandering on from the wings demanding to know what was going on. Of course it was the actual band members who collected their instruments and shooed away their masquerading dopplegangers.

Public speakers often open with a joke, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a band open a gig with such an elaborate hoax. It certainly set the tone that this was not to be a cerebral, shoe-gazing gig, though given the Caribbean rhythms and dance beats of their latest album, there was never much chance of that anyway.

Diol Edmond & Tiwii Duprate - photo by Jodie Meier - musicfeeds.com

Once the actual members of Arcade Fire took up their instruments they immediately launched into Normal Person from Reflektor, a rollicking examination of youthful uncertainty, non-conformity and casual cruelty, from which they ripped into Rebellion proper and Wake up, two of the best known tracks from their debut album, Funeral. Both tracks got the audience up and involved, particularly Wake Up’s soaring “Whoa…Hoh!” sing-a-long refrain. They followed this with a trinity of songs from The Neon Bible: an abbreviated, My Body is a Cage, Keep the Car Running and Ocean of Noise.

There were upwards of 10 people regularly on stage (is that a dectet or just an orchestra?) and with roadies invading from various corners between songs, it was nearly as crowded up there as on the lawn. Lead singer Win Butler was the consummate frontman, roaming across the stage wearing a golden jacket and exhorting the audience to join in the choruses.

 Will Butler in mask & Tim Kingsbury - photo by Jodie Meier - musicfeeds.com

Even with 10 people, multi-tasking was the order of the day with most members jumping between instruments every couple of songs. I’m not sure whether they suffer from a specialised form of musical ADHD whereby they get bored playing the same instrument for more than one song at a time, or whether there’s some sort of union ruling about job variety they’re required to observe. Perhaps they’re just showing off. Regine Chassagne must have played at least six different instruments during the course of the show, as well as taking lead vocals on Sprawl II and whenever possible, breaking out into 80s dance moves to match the 80s big hair and leggings look she was rocking. At one point she even twirled streamers rhythmic gymnastic style.

Regine Chassagne - photo by Jodie Meier  musicfeeds.com

In addition to guitars and bass, I counted at least eight keyboards - more than even Emerson, Lake & Palmer could have managed at once - two drum kits and a percussion section, including steel drums. For Keep the Car Running two of them were sawing away at violins, Win Butler was playing a mandolin and Regine Chassagne was playing something that might have been a hurdy-gurdy. Whatever it was, it required regular winding up.

With every song being an indie anthem of sorts, the audience was up and bellowing out the words for each one. It was like a 10,000 strong Glee Club, but with iPhones aloft. Things settled down a bit for The Suburbs – my favourite Arcade fire song – perhaps because it is a more sedate number requiring Win Butler to take a seat at the piano, or because the audience was less comfortable singing its falsetto chorus than shouting out ‘Whoa Ho!’

Afterlife began with the stage awash with swirling white lights, like the Milky Way, or the reflections of hundreds of disco balls. This song afforded the audience another big ‘Whoa-ho’ sing-a-long moment as Butler stood on the foldback speaker holding the mike out to the crowd.

It seemed that every song was a classic; Afterlife and Sprawl II led into the anthemic No Cars Go and the rock-a-billy of Joan of Arc. Then they busted out a cover of INXS’s The Devil Inside with Butler donning his bobble head and miming while guitarist Richard Reed Perry took the lead vocal. I’d rather hear them do one of their own songs, but it was a nice gesture and maintained the mood of uninhibited revelry they had built up. Perhaps they also wanted to make up for Butler’s quip that if it wasn’t for Australians, who would make coffee in Montreal.

Win Butler - photo by Jodie Meier - musicfeeds.com

 The set ended with a Here Comes The Night Time, a carousing, rhythmic Creole number in which a musical explosion at the finale coincided with a downpour of confetti descending on the audience. The excitement the audience displayed at this point showed that it doesn’t matter how hip or sophisticated you are, there are few things as thrilling or intoxicating as a being showered in confetti at a rock show.

Except perhaps the three song encore that followed: Ready To Start, Reflektor and Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out) that ended things in a fittingly raucous manner.

I’ve been to some great gigs at the Bowl over the years, R.E.M. in 1995 and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds in 2003 and 2013, and this was Arcade Fire gig every bit as exhilarating.

Encore: Roger Federer defeated Andy Murray in four sets.

Setlist

Normal Person

Rebellion (Lies)

Wake Up

My Body Is A Cage

Keep The Car Running

Ocean Of Noise

The Suburbs

It’s Never Over (Hey Orpheus)

Afterlife

Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)

No Cars Go

Joan of Arc

Devil Inside

Here Comes The Night Time

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Ready To Start

Reflektor

Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out)

The photos above were taken by Jodie Meier and were sourced from musicfeeds.com

http://musicfeeds.com.au/photos/arcade-fire-sidney-myer-music-bowl-melbourne-220214/#/slide/1