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Slowly but surely, I continue to chip away my backlog of intended posts. We only saw two shows since my last live music roundup, both very good in their way.
Christopher Tignor & This Will Destroy You
Through an ironic twist of fate, after failing to see many of the opening acts we’ve been keen to catch we ended up seeing all of Tignor’s set, which we were not particularly enthusiastic about after watching his stuff on Youtube. Tignor’s music is the sort of thing that’s probably fascinating to people who know the ins and outs of classical technique—and can appreciate all the sounds Tignor produces from his violin that lie outside the bounds of classical technique—but absent that knowledge he’s just a dude noodling around on an instrument. This, combined with my preference for music with strong melodic structures, means that Tignor was a yawn for me, and Tignor did not help his cause by chastising the audience for not applauding to his satisfaction a mere ten minutes into his set.
This Will Destroy You, however, did not disappoint. They are certainly shoegaze-y, which was why the venue, with its general admission theater seating, was perfectly suited to their performance. We’d grabbed seats on the lower level with a dead-on view of the stage, so when TWDY came on, we leaned back, shut our eyes, and let the music wash over us. They had one of those artsy experimental projections looping behind them while they played but I regularly study or fall asleep to TWDY’s back catalog so the visuals weren’t necessary to keep me focused on the music. (And they ended up out of sync with the performance anyway after the band stopped for one of the musicians repaired a broken guitar string and no one thought to pause the projection.) But again, this is sublime and meditative music to hear live, and it was a lovely set.
Killing Joke & Tool
Killing Joke is good—and I’m happy they’re still around. That said, they just never clicked with me the way Souixsie, Bauhaus, or Joy Division did.
A good show, as far as arena concerts go. One of the great joys of seeing live music is watching the on-stage interaction between the musicians, but with 30 to 40 feet between them, there was none of that here; it was basically like watching Tool recording a studio album in real time—and probably why the band spends so much money on visual projections. (These were very good.) Keenan bobbed around on some dimly lit risers at the back of the stage like a Mortal Combat character without a player at the controls. His voice may be on its way out, given how frequently he chose augmented it with mic effects. But to me, Tools’ drummer has always been the band’s main draw, and thankfully they trained the brightest spotlight on him. The guy is a machine, and it was really, really cool to watch him perform. Tool played a few crowd pleasers from Opiate, Aenima, and 10,000 Days (and Keenan recycled a fair amount of stage patter from previous performances) but the tracks from the newest album where—thankfully—the set’s main focus and fun to hear live.
これで以上です。
Christopher Tignor & This Will Destroy You
Through an ironic twist of fate, after failing to see many of the opening acts we’ve been keen to catch we ended up seeing all of Tignor’s set, which we were not particularly enthusiastic about after watching his stuff on Youtube. Tignor’s music is the sort of thing that’s probably fascinating to people who know the ins and outs of classical technique—and can appreciate all the sounds Tignor produces from his violin that lie outside the bounds of classical technique—but absent that knowledge he’s just a dude noodling around on an instrument. This, combined with my preference for music with strong melodic structures, means that Tignor was a yawn for me, and Tignor did not help his cause by chastising the audience for not applauding to his satisfaction a mere ten minutes into his set.
This Will Destroy You, however, did not disappoint. They are certainly shoegaze-y, which was why the venue, with its general admission theater seating, was perfectly suited to their performance. We’d grabbed seats on the lower level with a dead-on view of the stage, so when TWDY came on, we leaned back, shut our eyes, and let the music wash over us. They had one of those artsy experimental projections looping behind them while they played but I regularly study or fall asleep to TWDY’s back catalog so the visuals weren’t necessary to keep me focused on the music. (And they ended up out of sync with the performance anyway after the band stopped for one of the musicians repaired a broken guitar string and no one thought to pause the projection.) But again, this is sublime and meditative music to hear live, and it was a lovely set.
Killing Joke & Tool
Killing Joke is good—and I’m happy they’re still around. That said, they just never clicked with me the way Souixsie, Bauhaus, or Joy Division did.
A good show, as far as arena concerts go. One of the great joys of seeing live music is watching the on-stage interaction between the musicians, but with 30 to 40 feet between them, there was none of that here; it was basically like watching Tool recording a studio album in real time—and probably why the band spends so much money on visual projections. (These were very good.) Keenan bobbed around on some dimly lit risers at the back of the stage like a Mortal Combat character without a player at the controls. His voice may be on its way out, given how frequently he chose augmented it with mic effects. But to me, Tools’ drummer has always been the band’s main draw, and thankfully they trained the brightest spotlight on him. The guy is a machine, and it was really, really cool to watch him perform. Tool played a few crowd pleasers from Opiate, Aenima, and 10,000 Days (and Keenan recycled a fair amount of stage patter from previous performances) but the tracks from the newest album where—thankfully—the set’s main focus and fun to hear live.
これで以上です。
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