Monday 28 January 2013

David Byrne & St Vincent - 14 January 2013, Hamer Hall

I’ll be putting up a pair of two-night shows over the next week or so, and in both cases the second night is substantially better than the first. In the case of this show the reason is a bit hard to pin down. In part it’s because the first night was the first show they’d done in around three months. That’s hard enough for most bands, but particularly where your show features extensive (albeit simple) choreography. The other factor is that there was a better relationship with the crowd on the second night. Not that they were any more engaged, but simply that the band played better and the crowd became more enthusiastic which made the band play better and so on. Having said all that, I should also say that (unlike the Weezer show to come) the first night wasn’t actually bad, just not as good as the second.

Setlist wise these shows haven’t varied, but that’s a bit more understandable when you realise there’s a choreographed routine for every song that the band has to perform while playing. Mixing in one or two different songs across the two nights would have been nice, but I can understand why they didn’t. Going into this show I hadn’t actually heard Love this Giant and, while they mix in a few of their own songs, the bulk of the material is from that album. So ultimately the success of the show rests on the quality of that album and their performance of it. Fortunately, both are really really good. Particular highlights for me were Lightning, I Should Watch TV, and Outside of Space and Time. On the other hand, there weren’t any duds amongst the songs they played.

Finally, I was in the front few rows for this one, while it was kinda cool to see what way David Byrne dresses (right) the sound didn’t seem quite as good. In particular, the vocals aren’t as far up as I’d like. My suspicion is that this would have been better further back, where the unamplified sound of the horns would have had less of an effect. Ultimately, this is a pretty minor quibble, and lots of people might not even notice it.

Who
Weekend in the Dust
Save Me From What I Want
Strange Overtones
I Am an Ape
Marrow
This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody)
This Forest Awakes
Optimist
Like Humans Do
Lightning
Lazarus
Lazy
I Should Watch TV
Northern Lights
The One Who Broke Your Heart
Outside Space and Time

Cruel
Burning Down the House

The Party
Road to Nowhere

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