The Kiwi and I have seen Goldfrapp live a couple of times to date, and have always been impressed by the live shows. You'd be hard pressed not to, the lengths they go to to put on a real spectacle, and last night was more of the same. It was the last gig we'll see in the UK, now Ben Folds in Manchester has been postponed until next May.
In general, overall, it was brilliant, like always. We knew she's ace, we knew every track would be a winner, and we knew they'd do Black Cherry and Strict Machine as encores, and we weren't disappointed. A blistering version of Train, and Happiness complete with dancing mop / sheepdog monsters (pictured) were the highlights, along with Strict Machine, which absolutely shook the building.
Image from Dave Smith on Flickr, used with thanks but not permission.
But something seemed missing somehow. She did mention that the whole band had colds (in a rare moment of verbosity); perhaps that was it.
The first few tracks suffered from a weirdly bass-less sound, none of that gut-shaking thunderous bass-ness that we know Brixton can summon up. This came back, to an extent, later in the night, but it left the whole thing feeling a bit of a lack of punch. The odd bit of feedback didn't exactly make it feel like a professional production.
Secondly, and I know I've ranted about this before, but the crowd sucked massively. It's part of that whole thing where, once a artist gets to a certain size, no one at the event seems to be there to listen to the music, and seems perfectly happy to stand around yapping to each other. In recent Goldfrapp tours this probably wasn't such an issue, but with the recent tracks being a little more subdued the chatter was all too obvious.
So on the whole, the band were brilliant as always, but were let down by a dodgy sound system and a bunch of idiots in the crowd. My last and lasting impression of London gigs.
1 comment:
some years ago, around the time of the first two albums really, I would have loved to see them live, but the third album was a big disapointment I thought, and even more the recent one, so although I have toted with the idea of going to see them a couple of times this year, especially for their Meltdown set, I have pretty much given up on them. Maybe seeing them live would offer a different pespective.
I agree with you on the talking thing though, and it seems to get more and more these days. I think the worst I've experienced was Portushead at the Brixton Academy (a venue that seems to aatract that kind of things clearly). I wasn't enough to kill the evening because Portishead were awesome, but it was quite painful. I really don't understand people who pay a fortune to go and see someone and spend their whole evening chatting and not giving a shit about the performance. Because it is not just people who got in for free who do that, quite surprisingly.
themilkman
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