Note: I wrote this a few days after the gig and forgot to post it. The Bad Seeds show tonight in Vancouver reminded me….

My third Bad Seeds show in just a couple of weeks and I expected this one to be different. Removed from the stately confines of the Sydney Opera House (and its orchestra/child choir accoutrements) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds treated the Enmore with a little less respect, a little more edge, and it made for a very different live experience.

That said, it was the inclusion of an Opera House-safe Into My Arms (desperately missed at the Opera House shows) that was, perhaps, the moment I will take away from this show. My late introduction into the world of the Bad Seeds meant I actually hadn’t heard that song until six or seven years ago but it has quickly become a song I really love. So hearing Nick play it on piano, accompanied with simple bass and barely-there drums was pretty special.

The other three songs in the set that didn’t turn up at the two shows I saw a couple weeks back were Tupelo (which slayed in the encore), Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry and The Weeping Song. The Weeping Song featured opener Mark Lanegan on vocals and the arrangement was a bit more restrained than how they have played that song in the past. Meanwhile, Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry was an aggressively sweeping highlight.

But it wasn’t just the old stuff that kicked ass. Jubilee Street once again proved to be even better live than on the record (and it’s pretty damn incredible on Push The Sky Away). How a band can get away with playing it second in the set is a testament to how impressive their repertoire truly is.

Another highlight: Nick abusing some dude in the front row for getting a little handsy during Stagger Lee, then singing some of that song’s most venomous lines right at the dude. I think I would have wet myself had Nick directed that vitriol at me.

Overall I think I might have enjoyed this gig more than the ones at the Opera House; it just felt looser and more visceral. It was a bit on the short side, however….

Setlist
We No Who U R
Jubilee Street
Wide Lovely Eyes
Higgs Boson Blues
From Her To Eternity
Red Right Hand
God Is In The House
Jack The Ripper
Deanna
Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry
Into My Arms
The Weeping Song (featuring Mark Lanegan)
The Mercy Seat
——
Tupelo
Stagger Lee

Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Sydney Opera House
February 26 & 27, 2013

- Last week I took in the first two of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds three shows at the Opera House. Two great nights. Both nights featured sixteen members (all strings) of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra as well as a children’s choir from Annandale along with their two adult chaperones.

- These were two spectacular shows…but not perfect ones (what show ever is?). So let’s start with a couple negatives and move on to the many positives.

- Negative 1: I love Push The Sky Away. I think it’s fantastic record. But in a live setting I was a bit disappointed with the use of the loops. I have no problem with loops being used generally so I’m actually wondering why it bothered me so much with the Bad Seeds and I think I’ve realized it was because it WAS the Bad Seeds. The first two songs each night featured 37 people on stage (most songs did, actually) yet Conway Savage and Ed Kuepper didn’t touch their instruments until the third song. When you have that talent on stage it seems such a waste when a sampled loop fills the room.

- Negative 2: This was more of a problem on the first night and again it was the new songs. At times Cave was entirely too dependent on his lyric sheets. I’ve always hated it when lead singers need to read their own lyrics from a sheet but others I’ve seen do it did it with flair and it never impacted their singing of the songs (looking at you, Mr. Michael Stipe). Nick Cave, however, really battled at times on one or two songs where he pretty much lost the melody as he looked down at the lyrics.

- Jubilee Street and Higgs Boson Blues, the two standout tracks from the record and the ones with the most words…Cave didn’t look at the lyric sheets once. And they killed live. Jubilee Street was especially memorable. Playing the album in order each night meant it came very early in the evening when it should be wrapping up sets. It’s just incredible live (the sixteen members of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the children’s choir certainly helped as well).

- The children’s choir were great. They hung around each night until The Ship Song finished and then headed home to bed. They didn’t sing on every song but when they did it was pretty special. O Children, Push The Sky Away, and the aforementioned Jubilee Street utilized their little voices the best.

- The string sections highlights were a little different. Both nights featured Warren Ellis conducting them like a complete mad man during From Her To Eternity and that is not a sight I will forget any time soon. They also brought tremendous grace to Love Letter, one of my favourite Nick Cave ballads. Watch Warren go nuts with the strings below…

- Warren Ellis was just a joy to watch all night (both nights) really.

- Barry Adamson!

- Cave was chatty both nights, both nights swearing in front of the kids and then apologizing. The best banter came early on in the second night when he commented that the front row were a lot younger than on night one. He said night one felt like a Leonard Cohen show.

- I think my favourite moment happened on the first night. Before Deanna was played, Warren Ellis was having equipment problems. Stalling for time, Cave chatted a bit before being convinced to head to the piano for an impromptu version of God Is In The House. I always love unscripted moments in an otherwise pretty scripted show and this was no different. I don’t think Cave got all the verses in but the band slowly joining in as they remembered the chords was a total joy.

- Jack The Ripper was really loud.

- Both nights ended with Stagger Lee because, really, what can you play after that? The way Cave embodies that character is both incredibly engaging and incredibly frightening. The man knows how to command a room.

- I found it odd that the lighting was very different each night (most notably on Jubilee Street). Perhaps related: it looked like the second night was professionally filmed.

- Round 3 Saturday night at the Enmore Theatre. Hoping for a somewhat different show…

Setlist February 26, 2013
We No Who U R
Wide Lovely Eyes
Water’s Edge
Jubilee Street
Mermaids
We Real Cool
Finishing Jubilee Street
Higgs Boson Blues
Push The Sky Away
From Her To Eternity
Red Right Hand
O Children
The Ship Song
Jack The Ripper
God Is In The House
Deanna
Your Funeral My Trial
Love Letter
The Mercy Seat
——
Stagger Lee

Setlist February 27, 2013
We No Who U R
Wide Lovely Eyes
Water’s Edge
Jubilee Street
Mermaids
We Real Cool
Finishing Jubilee Street
Higgs Boson Blues
Push The Sky Away
From Her To Eternity
Red Right Hand
O Children
The Ship Song
Jack The Ripper
Deanna
Love Letter
The Mercy Seat
——
Stagger Lee

Almost exactly two years ago, I saw Godspeed You! Black Emperor in Vancouver after years of assuming I had missed my chance. Two years on and the band have actually released a new record and are still on the road. Thanks to the ATP Festival, the band are currently touring Australia for the very first time and on Thursday night I saw them pummel the Enmore Theatre.

As is their habit, Godspeed came out one by one to play the Hope Drone which slowly built up and merged into Mladic from last year’s ‘ALLELUJAH! DON’T BEND! ASCEND!. The way Mladic coalesces from its chaotic intro into it’s powerfully nasty onslaught with all eight band members pounding away on their instruments is a sight to behold (never mind how it sounds).

Moya was on my wishlist and the band dutifully indulged me early on (sadly, The Sad Mafioso would go unplayed) and followed it up with Monheim, Chart #3, and World Police – all from Lift Yr. Skinny Fists. World Police And Friendly Fire was particularly vicious and was made all the more so by the images of fires and factories projected behind the mostly seated band. While “hope” is perhaps the oft-overlooked key element in Godspeed’s music, they do apocalyptic despair pretty well too.

The night ended with the only “new” Godspeed song of the past ten years (the material on last year’s record was old old old), the appropriately titled Behemoth. The “song” is about 45 minutes long and features four distinct movements: it’s opening, lurching march; a second drone portion; and two final movements that ultimately climax into a pretty incredible melody. Will this make up the next Godspeed You! Black Emperor record? Will we wait another ten years? Or will they simply disappear again? Who knows. But with only a few shows scheduled beyond last night’s ATP slot in Melbourne, I am incredibly thankful I got to spend one more night in a room with them.

Setlist
Hope Drone
Mladic
Moya
Monheim
Chart #3
World Police And Friendly Fire
Behemoth

Natasha Khan is just LOVELY.

I had never seen Bat For Lashes before last night’s show at the Enmore and I didn’t really know what to expect. Since 2009′s Two Suns, I’ve slowly but continually become enamored with all three Bat For Lashes records, including last year’s The Haunted Man (you would perhaps know this already if I had actually published my Best of 2012 list….it still might be coming). So there were lots of songs I was dying to hear – and she played pretty much all of them.

What I wasn’t expecting?

Witnessing a genuine artist not afraid to be joyful, open, and courageous on stage. I wasn’t expecting someone so void of cynicism. Natasha Khan was warm, she smiled all night, and she seemed like a truly genuine human being. Plus she bounced around all night on stage without missing a note. I mean I wasn’t expecting an asshole either…but it was refreshing to see an artist so comfortable with themselves and their songs that they didn’t hide behind feigned aloofness.

Having said that, she did wear a rather colourful skirt and cape that was pared down to, more or less, a bikini-top (and skirt) during Oh Yeah’s mild, opening striptease.

Oh, and she also played some songs that I should talk about BECAUSE THEY WERE INCREDIBLE. The Haunted Man is quite a clean and precise record but on stage Natasha Khan has injected the songs (with her fantastic, multi-tasking band headlined by an incredible drummer) with a lot more power, danceability, and general OOMPH. I mean they weren’t drastically different arrangements or anything but they were just different enough to make you go, “Yes, I see what you did there and it totally worked. Carry on.”

Lilies, the night’s opening song, was a great example. Natasha belted out the song while beating the bass-line out on a synthpad (that’s what I’m calling it) with a drumstick. Those bass notes boomed. By the time the song reached it’s triumphant “Thank God I’m aliiiiiive” moment it was also plainly evident that Natasha Khan can just flat out sing; the first of many goosebump moments.

Over the course of the show most of The Haunted Man was played: Oh Yeah was sultry as hell; All Your Gold was louder and very, very dancey; Horses of the Sun was another vocal masterpiece. About halfway through the show, Natasha, when most bands are playing their We Don’t Mind If You Go To The Bar song, just casually dropped Laura on the crowd like it was no big deal. Holy shit. It was incredible. The applause after that one took ages to die down and Natasha appeared to be quite moved by the response from the crowd (who I think, like me, just fell more and more under the Bat For Lashes spell as the show progressed).

She followed that up with Lumen, a song recorded during The Haunted Man sessions but didn’t quite make the cut (although you can track it down as a bonus track). It was only slightly more busy than Laura with just two band members helping out with atmospheric accompaniment. I always love it when bands and artists dig deep into their catalogue to find some more obscure songs to play; so score another point for Bat For Lashes.

Then another bomb was dropped in the form of Two Suns‘ Siren Song. I’ve always enjoyed this song but I certainly wouldn’t have called it one of my favourites from that album. But it was simply an incredible performance. The way Natasha sneered out the “I’m evil” lines was haunting. And it was just one of six (!) songs off Two Suns played last night and most of them, like The Haunted Man material, were also a little bigger and louder (and perhaps less subtle); but they all killed. The appropriately shimmery Glass was played early along with the piano-led Travelling Woman.

Going even further back, Bat For Lashes also played a few from the debut record Fur And Gold and they were the three I most wanted to hear (more points!). Prescilla, coming late in the set was particularly memorable despite the fact that what followed was just a flawless final five songs. FLAWLESS.

A Wall kicked it all off before Sleep Alone and Pearl’s Dream wrapped up the main set. Each one, somehow, improving on the last. Pearl’s Dream featured some lenghty beat-driven sections which climaxed spectacularly. The band then left the stage with the crowd dying for more (which of course we knew we were getting but whatever we clapped and cheered and stomped).

The band returned to the stage and played The Haunted Man, the centerpiece from the record. The performance incorporated elements of the recorded version, with Natasha holding up some sort of old radio (or something made to look old?) that played the haunting chant from the song’s middle section. When Natasha’s vocal part came up she lifted the radio over her head Lloyd Dobler-style and then belted out the rest of the song. WITH A LARGE RADIO ABOVE HER HEAD. It’s like thought to herself, “Singing isn’t that hard, maybe I’ll exercise while I do it”. We get it, Natasha, you’re awesome, now you’re just showing off. It was an indelible image I will remember for a long time (even after the Instagrams have been pushed down my feed).

One element of the gig that was not surprising was the night’s final song, Daniel. And it was a perfect end to a gig I loved from start to finish. The crowd sang along, danced along, and it was just a joyous, communal experience and the perfect send-off into the muggy Enmore night.

Setlist
Lilies
What’s A Girl To Do?
Glass
Travelling Woman
Oh Yeah
All Your Gold
Horses Of The Sun
Horse And I
Laura
Lumen
Siren Song
Prescilla
A Wall
Sleep Alone
Pearl’s Dream
——
The Haunted Man
Daniel

Prior to Tuesday night’s Yeah Yeah Yeahs show at the Metro, I had not seen the New York trio since 2004. Eight and a half years ago.

1. I am old.
2. That is a LONG time between shows.

It’s not like the band haven’t been active in that time, just bad timing on my part (whenever they were in Australia I was in Canada on a holiday). Despite the years, I still had incredible memories of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs live experience from the two shows I saw when they were supporting their debut album, Fever To Tell. This meant I was super hyped to finally be seeing them live again.

And somehow they didn’t disappoint.

For about 75 minutes on Tuesday night, the Metro was a sweaty, throbbing mess of guitar wails, bouncing bodies, and the incomparable Karen O completely owning the stage.

The band opened the show with Rich, Karen O dressed in some crazy, sparkling white suit that would not have breathed very well. After the second song (Mosquito, the title track from the upcoming album), Karen O reminisced about falling off the Metro stage ten years and badly hurting herself during a performance of Rich. Apparently she wanted to exorcise those demons on Tuesday.

The rest of the set was a blend of the band’s entire back catalogue. Three new songs were played (the aforementioned Mosquito, the spooky Earth, and a quiet one I believe was Despair), and every album was presented. Since I hadn’t seen them since 2004 I was excited to see some of the songs I hadn’t seen live before. They didn’t disappoint with a stomping versions of Heads Will Roll and Zero from It’s Blitz while Gold Lion, Phenomena, and Turn Into represented Show Your Bones.

Surprisingly, Fever To Tell was heavily featured. Rich, Cold Light, Black Tongue were all played in the first half of the show and it’s easy to see why the band still enjoys playing these ones live as they still kill. The ubiquitous Maps was also played and I was reminded of just how good a song it is. And the final song of the night was a raucous version of Date With The Night which closed the gig in a suitably manic manner.

The gig itself was fantastic. Even better was the Yeah Yeah Yeahs reminding me how incredible they are and how much I love them.

Setlist
Rich
Mosquito
Cold Light
Phenomena
Under The Earth
Black Tongue
Zero
Skeletons
Despair
Maps
Gold Lion
Miles Away
Heads Will Roll
——
Turn Into
Date With The Night

FasterLouder has a review up with some great photos.

Kirin J Callinan opened and the less said the better I think. Maybe I’ll be in the mood next week when he opens for Bat For Lashes.

Spiritualized
Sydney Opera House
December 2, 2012

The Opera House is such an iconic structure (especially to an outsider like me) that it is always kind of special to see a favourite band there (even if the interior of the building is, well, kind of ordinary). So I was pretty excited as I looked out over the harbour waiting to take my seat (Row 2!) for Spiritualized.

Once inside, Spiritualized wasted little time. With no support act, the band were on stage at 8:05 with a brand new song called Here It Comes. A simple, focused song, Here It Comes blended right into Hey Jane from this year’s excellent Sweet Heart, Sweet Light. Back in May when I saw the band early in the tour I remember Hey Jane being a lot more fierce but I enjoyed it nonetheless. In fact, to me, most of the show seemed rather restrained by Spiritualized standards.

Other than Here It Comes, the band also played two other brand new songs. ‘A’ Song (obviously a working title) is a lengthy, bluesy song that I’d love to see the band do more of these days. Perfect Miracle, the other new one, not so much.

The final portion of the show did make up for a rather tame first half. Take Your Time, complete with a manufactured volume boost in the climax, was spectacular as was Electric Mainline. The encore featured Jason reaching back to the Spacemen 3 days with versions of Come Down Easy and Walking With Jesus. Come Down Easy had never been played by Spiritualized prior to this tour so it was surprising to hear (and with Jason on an acoustic guitar no less).

The night ended with a suitably epic Smiles stretched out for nearly ten minutes before spinning into total aural chaos. As I left my seat I was longing for more of that from Spiritualized.

Setlist
Here It Comes
Hey Jane
Electricity
Heading For The Top Now
Freedom
Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
So Long You Pretty Thing
‘A’ Song
Perfect Miracle
Take Your Time
Electric Mainline
——
Come Down Easy
Walking With Jesus
Smiles

The show was rather short too. 1 hour and 50 minutes by my count.

1. Happy to see a show with Lotus Flower as the opener.
2. Airbag is always so great. Now, thanks to Clive, with sleigh bells all the way through.
3. Great to hear The Daily Mail again after not hearing it Night 1.
4. How To Disappear Completely…not played a lot this year but it’s always so majestic.
5. The National Anthem !!!!
6. LOVED the first encore. Especially Kid A. Hadn’t heard it yet this year and I really love the arrangement they’re doing of it this tour.
7. Identikit, IMBW, and Street Spirit. Seriously stellar Encore 1.
8. True Love Waits was really more than an intro to EIIRP. Two verses, two choruses.
9. An Idioteque fail to end the night. As I said on At Ease, kind of a funny way to end the night.

Who knows when I’ll see the band next. Thanks for three great shows in 2012, guys.

Setlist
Lotus Flower
Airbag
Bloom
The Daily Mail
Myxomatosis
Bodysnatchers
The Gloaming
Separator
How To Disappear Completely
Nude
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Reckoner
There There
The National Anthem
Feral
Paranoid Android
——
Give Up The Ghost
Kid A
Identikit
I Might Be Wrong
Street Spirit
——
15 Step
True Love Waits/Everything In Its Right Place
Idioteque

The problem with writing for At Ease is that I can feel a bit Radiohead-overloaded at times (mainly when the band is on tour as they were this year). The result is that I don’t often feel the urge to write about the band here when I’ve already done it there. Like this belated review for last week’s show in Sydney which I covered for At Ease.

But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t blown away by the band again. In fact, these days, after seeing the band 24 times, I’m blown away by the fact that I am generally STILL blown away every night. And still finding new little things to enjoy in the show. For instance, during this first show in Sydney I noticed something I hadn’t seen before in the way Jonny plays the outro guitar part for Weird Fishes/Arpeggi (he loops himself).

Of the two shows in Sydney, I definitely preferred night 1. The main reason for this I think is that the setlist hit some pretty Sean-friendly spots. First up, Ful Stop. I was dying to hear that one live as it has grown on me a lot as they’ve played it this summer/fall. While I love Identikit, I think Ful Stop has the potential to be a real standout track in the studio. The lights for this one were pretty great as well – all bright, rainbowy swirls and flashes.

Two other songs were ones the band simply skipped over in Seattle and, as a collector of songs, I was hoping to hear: Staircase and Separator. I’m not actually a huge fan of Staircase but it was still great to hear it live. Separator, on the other hand, might be my favourite song off The King Of Limbs, and I was gutted they didn’t play it in Seattle. To finally hear it live was fantastic (even if everyone around us decided it was a good time to chat while the band played a stellar version).

And while the band had been playing Planet Telex pretty regularly this year, I had kind of forgotten about it so when they hit those opening chords I kind of lost my shit. It’s such a killer live song that most bands would be blasting it every night if they had it in their arsenal. Radiohead, on the other hand, trot it out every now and then like it’s no big deal. But man, it slays live. And, again, the lights were fantastic.

These Are My Twisted Words, played in the first encore, was a pleasant surprise as well. It’s grown on my over the years more than nearly any other Radiohead song and it’s a totally different song for the band to do on stage (much looser than a lot of their stuff). Videotape was another welcome song which hasn’t been played all that much this year and it seemed to really connect with the crowd (who never had an In Rainbows tour to hear it prior to last week).

Some other thoughts:
- Feral has just gotten better and better as the tour progressed. Jonny was nuts on this one.
- hearing Lucky as the second song of the night was incredible
- Seriously, the band are never going to top the lighting/screens they had for this tour. Stunning.

Setlist
Bloom
Lucky
Morning Mr Magpie
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
Myxomatosis
The Gloaming
Separator
Staircase
Videotape
Nude
Ful Stop
Lotus Flower
There There
Planet Telex
Feral
Bodysnatchers
——
Give Up The Ghost
Pyramid Song
These Are My Twisted Words
Reckoner
Paranoid Android
——
15 Step
Everything In Its Right Place
Idioteque

Almost exactly six years ago I wrote about Godspeed You! Black Emperor and how much I missed them. At that point they were three or fours into a hiatus that seemed like it was heading into Never Going To End territory. A few years later I had pretty much given up hope of ever seeing the band live. Or of ever hearing a new record.

In 2011 I finally got to see them live. And today I am holding a new Godspeed LP in my hands while the crushing music fills my ears. It’s kind of surreal.

In that post from 2006 I wrote:

Like many other Godspeed fans I’ve been hooked up to a verrrrrry slow I.V. drip of two unreleased Godspeed songs that they played live in 2003 before scrapping a planned tour of western North America, announcing an indefinite hiatus, and disappearing into side projects. ‘Albanian’ is a monster of a track that eclipses anything off Yanqui…even shitty recordings can’t hide the sheer ferocity of this song. Another new song, ‘Gamelan,’ while less immediate, does embody a lot of what Godspeed were/are about. In fact, if the band went into the studio, put just those two songs down and put it out I’d be thrilled.

And lo and behold they did exactly that. Albanian became Mladic. Gamelan became We Drift Like Worried Fire. And two songs I’d been listening to crappy recordings of for years are now a new album and sounding more vital than ever. ‘ALLELUJAH! DON’T BEND! ASCEND! is pretty much exactly the album I had been hoping for for much of the last decade. Truly impressive stuff. Check out the record below.

Buy the record here.

And be sure to read the entire transcript of their recent interview with the Guardian. Rock ‘n’ roll, kids.

It’s been a crazy summer. So crazy I no longer live in Vancouver. Amanda and I have returned to Sydney, Australia for the foreseeable future…more on that later I suppose as the show reviews roll in.

But before we left Vancouver we managed to see some shows this summer. First up, we saw Florence + The Machine and The Walkmen at Deer Lake Park back in July. Amanda is a pretty big fan of Florence so this was a show that was definitely her bag. I went along knowing I’d at least get to see The Walkmen in support (and I swear I’ve seen them open for about 50 bands over the years). They played quite a bit of stuff off their pretty decent new record, Heaven. But, as always, the set highlight was a blistering version of The Rat.

Setlist
We Can’t Be Beat
Heartbreaker
The Love You Love
Woe Is Me
Juveniles
Blue As Your Blood
138th Street
Love Is Luck
The Rat
All Hands And The Cook
Heaven

And in one of those No Expectations = Pleasant Surprises situations, Florence + The Machine actually put on a pretty solid show. The music isn’t really my thing but Florence Welch GIVES it on stage. I really wasn’t expecting to see her gallivanting all over the place while belting out those songs. But she did. And her voice was pretty spectacular. Extra bonus points for the rain holding out for the entire gig…really thought we were going to get soaked at this one.

On August 8 we headed down to Seattle to see Sigur Rós at the wonderful Paramount Theater. I had been there once before to see Oasis back in (I believe) 2000, so it was a long time between visits. But it really is a beautiful venue.

Sigur Rós were spectacular as always. Prior to the gig I was wondering just how they were going to tackle Valtari live since the album is quite ambient and meandering (even by Sigur Rós standards). Turns out they’re handling it by playing very little of it. I was probably one of the few disappointed by the band playing just three new songs; I really would have liked to have seen them tackle a couple more (especially Valtari‘s opening track Ég Anda).

However, any disappointment with that was largely quashed by an incredibly powerful show full of some of the band’s most potent live songs. The band (sadly minus keyboardist/genius Kjartan for their 2012 tour) were accompanied by an extra guitarist and keyboardist plus strings and horns which gave every song details and ferocity that might have been lacking a bit on their 2008 tour as a quartet. I had avoided all setlists prior to the show so my mind was pretty blown when they dropped Í Gær in the set. I’ve always loved this song which had been played regularly in 2001 (though not at the show I saw) but not much since.

I’ve seen Sigur Rós quite a few times over the past ten years but this show was memorable even by their extremely high standards.

Setlist
Ekki múkk
Varúð
Ný Batterí
Í Gær
Vaka
Sæglópur
Svefn-g-englar
Viðrar vel til Loftárása
Hoppípolla
Með Blóðnasir
Olsen Olsen
Festival
Hafsól
———
Dauðalogn
Popplagið

My Last Show In Vancouver was kind of a perfect Last Show In Vancouver. It was late August, it was a beautiful day, and the show took place in the parking lot of the Waldorf. It really was a fitting way to end summer. And the fact that the lineup offered some of Vancouver’s finest bands just made it all the better.

Basketball were the first band I caught and they were much better than when I last saw them opening for Japandroids back in 2009. They seemed a lot more focused and together and they really don’t sound like many other bands out there at the moment – and that is always appreciated. Next up were Ladyhawk and they did their thing pretty damn well (their thing = being a great, gritty bar band). Some of the new songs sounded pretty solid and I’m looking forward to the new album. Take a listen to You Read My Mind from the new album No Can Do out in just over a week’s time.

But the main reason that my last Vancouver gig (for now!) was so great was the mighty behemoth that is Black Mountain. Giant riffs, proggy keyboards, and epic beards/hair, Black Mountain really are best experienced live and last month’s show was a perfect example. With the exception of Japandroids, I’m not sure I’d want any other Vancouver band sending me on my way to Australia. So thanks for kicking ass, Black Mountain.

Setlist
Mary Lou
Tyrants
Phosphorescent Waves
Old Fangs
Wilderness Heart
Buried By The Blues
Druganaut
Angels
Queens Will Play
Stormy High
Don’t Run Our Hearts Around
——
In Sequence
Let Spirits Ride
Roller Coaster

Download
Black Mountain – Mary Lou

So now A Reminder is back in Sydney where this little blog got started. And in the coming months Radiohead, Spiritualized, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor are all coming this way…so lots to look forward to.