Dappled Cities Fly / Red Riders - 15 Jun 2007 - The Metro

Last time I saw support act Belles Will Ring, supporting Death Cab for Cutie that time, they were a four piece, and not particularly memorable in a generic rock way. This time around, they were now a five member band, and they'd picked up a 60s folk-rock influence. Some of the songs from their album Mood Patterns are quite catchy – I particularly liked 'Park Benches', which is the point where their set picked up for me, 'Midnight' and 'The Coldest Heart'.

After Belles Will Ring, both Red Riders and Dappled Cities came out on stage and did a coin toss to determine who would play first on the double bill. To my relief, Dappled won the toss and elected to go first. After hearing Dappled briefly at Modest Mouse and wanting more, I'd come to really enjoy their sound. They didn't disappoint, with a good tight set; the band gelled together really well, and they seemed to be really enjoy playing, and the crowd’s response. I admit I tuned out a touch during the middle of the set with more material from A Smile but there were lots of great moments from second album Granddance. 'Work It Out' was slowed down, which threw me a bit at first, but still sounded great, and 'Holy Chord' was really beautiful live, with the crowd singing along enthusiastically.

Not a set list, but we definitely heard: Granddance, Peach, Vision Bell, Within Hours, Beach, Work It Out, Fire Fire Fire, Holy Chord and Colour Coding.

We ended up only staying for the first 3 songs of the Red Riders set, which included their hit 'What They Say About Us'. They struck me as being quite young, not really polished on stage yet, but they had a real energy to them that was fun. The crowd on the floor was really into them. They reminded me a bit of The Strokes, a bit of Franz Ferdinand.

Brand New - 9 Jun 2007 - UNSW Roundhouse

Some time at the end of last year, I heard two tracks from Brand New's latest album The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me and fell in love with the brooding music and the really interesting, intensely emotional lyrics. I could not wait to see them live. Since we weren't interested in the support, and the weather was terrible, so we rocked up about 10 minutes before they were due on. Despite muddy sound the concert was good. There were times it was clearly evident that Jesse Lacey's voice was really strong and capable, so I think that was more a problem with the acoustics of the room than the band, or someone at the sound desk needed to pick up their game.

The band were able to create this massive wall of sound that I could feel all around me. They played around with the songs, with interesting arrangements and variations from the album sound (eg. slowed down first verse of 'Jude Law...'), which worked mostly, though sometimes it threw the crowds' attempts to sing along. There were lots of Jesse Lacey acoustic guitar moments; 'Play Crack the Sky' being played as sparsely as it is on the album at the start, great calm-before-the-storm moments before the song goes crazy and beautiful and LOUD. Jesse Lacey's voice was...I don't know how to describe it, apart from feeling like he was breaking down in front of us and everything he felt was carried in the burden of his voice and words. It wasn't perfect, but it cracked with emotion and it made me believe that he was really passionate about what he was singing, and that was awesome.

They started with songs from the previous two albums, which was great, but a bit confusing – I kept waiting for them to throw the new stuff in, but it didn’t come for the first hour! They went offstage for a brief period after 'Play Crack the Sky', and when they came back on they played almost all of the The Devil and God... which is so so awesome. The Green Day cover was unexpected – Jesse was just strumming as they were prone to do during the numbers, and then it suddenly became recognisable and a part of the crowd started singing along happily. He only played a bit, then he stopped just as the drummer started to pick it up, and laughed and said, “Oh, Brian really wants to do this”, teasing us, before he said, “But no, no happy songs, we’re here to play sad bastard music".


Jaws Theme Swimming
Sic Transit Gloria...Glory Fades
Me vs. Maradona vs. Elvis
The Shower Scene
The No Seatbelt Song
The Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot
Okay I Believe You But My Tommy Gun Don't
Jude Law and a Semester Abroad
Seventy Times 7
Play Crack the Sky

Welcome to Bangkok
Sowing Season (Yeah)
Millstone
The Archers Bows Have Broken
Luca
(short cover of Basket Case)
Limousine (MS Rebridge)
Handcuffs
Jesus
Degausser
You Won’t Know

The Science of Sleep (2007; d. Michel Gondry)

This was as beautiful and creatively wonderful as I'd read, as well as being quirkily funny, and much more coherent than some reviews had led me to believe. I believed the awkward romance between Stephane (Gael Garcia-Bernal) and Stephanie (Charlotte Gainsborough) - the way it didn't flow smoothly in that Hollywoodised way, but had this stop-start motion to it. They progressed because they really were kindred souls in their creative minds and expression, but also it was impeded by the self-same obsessive infantilism in Stephane that left him about as emotionally mature as a four year old. The ending though, its bittersweet ambiguity, was perfect for the movie and my expectations of how their love was shown throughout the movie.

Fall Out Boy - 9 Mar 2007 - Big Top

We ended up about halfway down the room, on the far left. The crowd around us was pretty good – no drunk idiots, a mix of tall and tiny, and, I was told, a lot less scene than the crowd at the Hordern gig the night before. Fall Out Boy started at 9:30 on the dot, with the Kanye West remix of “This Ain’t A Scene, It’s an Arms Race” playing out over the dark and the cheers, before the stage lit up for first song 'Our Lawyer Made Us...' The stage set was pretty – dark blue backdrop printed with Infinity on High images, and lots of coloured lighting and a lighting effect that looked like fairy lights. Pete and Joe liked to prowl the stage, swapping sides constantly we got to watch them both while playing, though Joe was on our side more often. They also liked to get up on the amps at the front of the stage, giving everybody a better look (Pete gets more screams, obviously). Joe played like a maniac, which is just as I’d seen in other live footage, while Pete is much more low-key while playing. Andy was a sight playing like a maniac up on his riser. And Patrick – oh Patrick. His beautiful big voice, right there – I was so happy to hear it live.

Near the beginning, Pete did almost exactly the same “back up three steps” talk as Gerard Way to try and get the mosh to be a little less crazy, which, do they teach that in Frontman 101 or something? It was much weirder coming from Pete, particularly as he later encouraged crowd-surfing and a circle pit. The set was nicely packed and fast moving, but oddly biased towards older material – they’re ostensibly here for new album Infinity on High but they only played four songs from that. Overall it was a great gig for singing and dancing along to one poptastic song after another, a fun experience.


Our Lawyer Made Us Change the Name of This Song So We Wouldn’t Get Sued
Of All The Gin Joints In All The World
Sugar We’re Going Down
The Patron Saints of Liars and Fakes
Chicago Is So Two Years Ago
Nobody Puts Baby in the Corner
Sophomore Slump or Comeback of the Year
A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More ‘Touch Me’
Thriller
Grand Theft Autumn / Where Is Your Boy
XO
Grenade Jumper
Golden
This Ain’t a Scene, It’s An Arms Race
I Slept With Someone In Fall Out Boy And All I Got Was This Stupid Song Written About Me
The Take Over, The Break’s Over
Dance Dance
Saturday

My Chemical Romance - 26 Jan 2007 - Big Top

Late last year, Alison made me listen to MCR's latest album, The Black Parade. I put it on not expecting much but to my surprise I fell in love – with the soaring anthemic melodic rocks songs, the passionate lyrics, the underlying punk attitude, the absolute sing-a-long enjoyableness of an album that is ostensibly about death. And I could not wait to see them live and sing-a-long with my fist in the air, which is the default feeling I get when I listen to the albums over and over again.

Support act Another Day Down came across really LAME, trying to be this heavy rock band. One of them had a mullet and looked right out of the 80s, but without the irony. Totally forgettable songs that didn't even sound good the first time.

But My Chemical Romance were AWESOME. They played so much from The Black Parade, almost the entirety. Gerard sounded great and looked healthy and happy, and seemed like he was really enjoying himself in Australia. During 'Dead!' the front of the mosh got quite scary and he stopped the song completely to try and calm it down. He made sure the people getting crushed were pulled out, he instructed everyone to take some steps backwards slowly to create more room, and told the kids that no matter who much fun they were having they should stop and help people up if they’ve gone down in the mosh. He had the room’s attention all nigh. He made a great frontman, with gestures and voice and passion, throwing himself around the stage, singing his heart out. I *love* him.

The rest of the band were great, but subdued. Ray was so so so good – whenever I knew a great lick was coming up I would make sure I was watching him shred on his guitar. There wasn’t much band interaction during the set, mostly Gerard talked to the audience and had them eating out of the palm of his hand. The highlight of the night was last song 'Famous Last Word'. It was insanely good live, with Gerard taking out his earpiece to hear the audience yelling the refrain back to him, arms reaching out towards the stage, loving him and the band and their music and his words.


The End
Dead!
How I Disappear
I’m Not Okay
Mama
Welcome to the Black Parade
I Don’t Love You
Thank You for the Venom
Teenagers
House of Wolves
You Know What They Do to Guys Like Us in Prison
Helena
Sleep

Cancer
Famous Last Words

Muse - 23 Jan 2007 - Hordern Pavillion

Hordern = not so good. It is my least favourite venue for shows, because in its supposed egalitarianism of all GA it just damns short people like me, and for some reason the worst crowds I've ever encountered have all been at the Hordern. But I saw half the Ground Components set with Alison and her friends and I quite enjoyed them; Fiona had told us beforehand that they were “scream-y, but with good melodies” and it was true, but she forgot to mention the screaming was done by an Iggy Pop lookalike over catchy rockabilly tunes (this is a plus).

In between the sets I went and hung out with some other friends right of centre, in the thick of the mosh. The crowd was uniformly tall and hulking, with lots of very excited/drunk/high guys, and it was getting pretty rough in the wait for Muse. People kept asking me, “Are you sure you’re going to be ok?” I thought I was going to be fine...in the end, I lasted in the mosh for the first four songs, then my glasses flew off my face (ACK!!!!!) After rescuing them, I decided that I was sick of bracing myself against giant frat boy types who were threatening to fall on me en masse every other moment and made my way out towards the side. But before that, someone dumped a beer over the crowd near me during the second song, so I smelt like beer and sweat for the rest of the night, which earned me lots of dirty looks from other girls during the concert, understandably. I ended on the far right, about 6 rows from the front but so so far away from Matt Bellamy. *sadface* I did have fun dancing around like crazy and moshing in that area though; it was good that the energy levels were so crazy that the mosh was fairly far reaching actually, and where I was there were lots more short happy fans and it was a comfortable, fun mosh rather than a violent experience. But there was the only one moment during the gig that I got a decent view of the band, when I had a rest on the steps to the seats before a security guard forced me to move, which is partly why I can't say I had the best concert experience; while the music was awesome, I just felt like I came away with almost no sense of the band as a visual experience since most of the night all I saw were sweaty shoulders, hair and more heads. I normally don’t have this much to say about the mechanics of being on the floor at a concert, but I felt a lot of what I felt about Tuesday night stemmed from that – the good and the bad.

Musically, I didn't have any qualms about the gig at all. It was pretty damn spectacular. I love the first four songs played but I had very little recollection of them because of the aforementioned mosh shenanigans. They followed that up with 'Feeling Good', and it is the classiest rock rendition of a great Nina Simone song, and then they followed that with 'Hoodoo' and it sounded so so good, with the intense piano chords and giant sound. The whole night, they sounded MASSIVE and awesome live. Even though it’s just the three of them on stage, it was so strong and powerful, whether it was the ballads with Matt's unbelievable voice, or the rock songs pounding out.

The first encore was the real highlight though. When they came back out, Matt said that we should all get our lighters and mobile phones out for 'Soldier’s Poem', but in my area we were all giggling because this person had a lighter that was more like a flamethrower, it threw out these massive tongues of fire and you could see the owner getting their thumb burnt over and over again, but he kept doing it and we really appreciated the spectacle. Then the energy levels went through the roof with 'Hysteria' and 'Stockholm Syndrome' back to back, again tight and fast and insane, and yeah, I enjoyed this mosh. “Second” encore was just fun, with a crowd karaoke singalong to Knights of Cydonia, so tongue-in-cheek and enjoyable live, ending the on a high energy note.


Take A Bow
Map Of The Problematique
Butterflies And Hurricanes
Supermassive Black Hole
Newborn
Starlight
Forced In
Bliss
Feeling Good
Hoodoo
Invincible
Time Is Running Out
Plug In Baby

Soldier's Poem
Hysteria
Stockholm Syndrome

Knights Of Cydonia

Modest Mouse - 3 Jan 2007 - Enmore Theatre

I didn’t really have any expectations going in, because I am woefully acquainted with the entirety of the Modest Mouse oeuvre (though what I know I like) so I was ready to go and experience for experience's sake. It was good to see some really good live ROCK (when I'm listening to Modest Mouse my dad will often pop in and ask what all the noise is) with the jangly guitars, the growling bass, the massive percussion section.

We arrived about halfway through the Dappled Cities set, and what I heard was catchy and good. Two things in particular struck me – they can caterwaul in harmony! and the lead singer/guitarist has a really nice voice. I will be looking for more of their stuff to listen to.

Modest Mouse started with 'Ocean Breathes Salty', which was one of about five songs I wanted to hear tonight. They followed up with a stompingly good 'Black Cadillac', then a song that was only about a minute and a half long, then Isaac Brock stopped and said something along the lines of “Normally we just play this through again because that’s all there is. It’s a good song so here we go.” And then they really did just play it all the way through again.

Before the concert we'd wondered when in the set 'Float On' (their far and away best known song) would go and we guessed either first or last or in the encore to draw out is popularity. However four songs in there it was, and it was good but not great – I still love the song, but hearing it live did nothing for me. However, a few more songs in they played an absolutely blistering rendition of 'Tiny Cities Made of Ashes' that just raised the energy levels. This started a great section of songs – 'Tiny Cities', 'Bukowski', 'The World At Large', 'The View' - where the crowd really got into it; the moshers started a crazy whirling pit in the centre, and others were less timid in moving along to the rhythm and beat. And I got to geek out over the use of unexpected instrumentation, especially during Bukowski with the bit when it’s the banjo, electric double bass and accordion only – so cool.

Isaac Brock tried a bit of banter, though for him it consisted of awkwardly funny sarcasm. He was most animated when he was talking about cuddling koalas in Brisbane, which is adorable. And I’ve discovered that I really like it when frontmen are narky at certain parts of the crowd – it might be a bit mean, but it’s still amusing when they’re paying out some idiot in the crowd (I guess as long as it’s not me I’m ok with that). The crowd was a bit insane last night though, with the crazy hyper girls on the barrier, and the half-naked guy who kept trying to crowd surf and actually dove onto the stage at one point, only to be chased back onto the floor by a big security guard who dragged him away forcibly while the guy’s girlfriend hung off the security guard as an useless impediment.

Last song of the set was 'Breakthrough' (also good). There was a two song encore ending with 'Dramamine', which I did want to hear, but they noodled through it for a bit too long. The energy level of the crowd was flagging and it seemed that most were not in the mood for that kind of extended jam, which meant the concert ended on a strangely impatient note.