First thing's first, trains on a Sunday are annoyingly awkward at the best of times so if you are anything like myself who lives just outside of London gigs on a Sunday can often be a somewhat sordid affair which involves either a fair amount of running or waiting. In this case the way there involved a lot of waiting and the way back a lot of running so by the time I got there it was halfway through London six piece 'Sian Alice Group's' set which didn't surprise me as I have so far managed to miss this band live on about six different occasions. Nonetheless the songs that I did see the group play were very impressive, mostly showcased from their latest album 'Troubled, Shaken Etc' the songs took on a life of their own live, played with a lot more aggression tracks such as 'Close to the Ground' sounded purely hypnotic. They have a great live presence and it certainly inspired me to go back and give their album a full listen.
It's been a whirlwind few months for Mr Bradford Cox, what with Deerhunter's apparent hiatus and the loss of his Atlas Sound backing band going, as he said 'back to their....Jobs' it was just the man himself tonight which didn't seem to bother a single person in the sold out crowd. One thing that came to my attention straight away was his confidence and honesty, after watching Deerhunter in August I wasn't expecting much in the way of crowd interaction but totally surprised me, something Cox has done a lot of late, bouncing onto stage joking, and telling anecdotes about his ordeal of a journey to get here, how he might shit himself any minute or how he had probably annoyed the Breeders as he was meant to design their t shirts and hadn't. This sort of intimacy with the crowd fitted the mood perfectly and it was pretty much like you were having a beer with and a jam with the guy yourself, as Cox said "this is just like me being at home, this is pretty much what I do."
With a little worry in my mind about how the songs would turn out without a backing band any doubt in my mind was quashed in the first thirty seconds as he and Laetitia Sadier of Setereolab joined the stage and eased into the phenomenal Quick Canal with Cox starting off mixing at least three different guitar lines with a variety of pedals and effects before dropping the guitar altogether (with the loops still playing) and heading to the back to sing backing and play the drums.
Cox continued solo ploughing through Kid Klimax and Criminals, stripping them of all but his acoustic and a mouth organ which worked well.
This was a very special performance and Cox certainly worked well to make it feel that way, in between his amazing music and jokes he still found time to get a strange kid up on stage to dance to a number and take requests, where he tried and failed to play Pavement's 'We Dance.'
Owing again to the awful train service on Sunday I was unable to watch his whole set but word on the grapevine is that he ended the set with a song he pretty much made up on the spot about a real life incident involving getting high, looking for porn and finding a gun instead. Sounds just like something Cox would do.
No comments:
Post a Comment