Mew @ Venue

After about six years of waiting, I finally got the chance to see Mew live last night at Venue as the band played their first show in Vancouver in a couple years. Having never seen the band before I was hoping for a mix of material from the last few albums and the band pretty much delivered a near perfect setlist for me.

Opening with one of my favourite songs of the year, Introducing Palace Players, the band immediately showed themselves to be talented (though not overly exciting) performers: the jagged guitar riff was even better live. The guitars were given an even bigger workout as the band segued directly into Circuitry Of The Wolf which then flowed right into Chinaberry Tree. The Kites tracks continued with Special (amazing drumming!) and The Zookeeper’s Boy. How’s that for a set of songs to open a gig?

All night I was impressed with Jonas Bjerre’s vocals. His vocal register is so high I wondered whether he would be able to keep it up over the course of an entire gig. But he did, hitting every note all night. The band, however, did seem a bit tired and while they were certainly capable I was hoping they’d be even more bombastic and loud. The creepy animated projections did, however, help provide for some visual stimulation.

The main set continued to mix songs from this year’s No More Stories with Frengers and Kites material and culminated with an exuberant version of Beach before crowd-pleaser Am I Wry? No and the penultimate 156. 156′s arrangement was quite different from the recorded version and it absolutely exploded after a mellow opening. Probably my favourite song of the night. The main set then ended on a subdued note with Reprise.

The band returned for a four song encore that consisted of three songs from Kites and one short new song. Apocalypso was an absolute storm while the night ended with an epic Louise Louisa and I was left totally impressed. Despite seeming tired the band were still pretty damn incredible throughout the entire gig. Not a bad show to end the year with.

Setlist
Introducing Palace Players
Circuitry Of The Wolf
Chinaberry Tree
Special
The Zookeeper’s Boy
Hawaii
Sometimes Life Isn’t Easy
Eight Flew Over, One Was Destroyed
Repeaterbeater
Beach
Am I Wry? No
156
Reprise
———
Apocalypso
Saviours Of Jazz Ballet (Fear Me, December)
Bamse/Bear
Louise Louisa

Photos here.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 12th, 2009 at 2:30 pm and is filed under General, Photos, Reviews, Setlists, Shows, Vancouver. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.