Alkaline Trio – Manchester Academy – 11/02/09
Filed under: Live Reviews by Mick5 Comments »
The Academy is becoming quite a familiar place now, I bought a drink, got myself comfortable and was ready to enjoy the night right away.
The first band up was Broadway Calls. They had a tough job, warming up the crowd. I would like to say they succeeded, but even though their performance was solid and there were a number of people already watching, only a small number seemed interested.
My first impression was of a sort of American Mcfly, I think this was down to the similar sounding singer’s voice, and not a reflection of their music. A more fair comparison would be Sum41 without the humour.
The crowd was pretty dead for their entire set. The bassist had to try three times to get people to start clapping along, and even then it didn’t last long. This wasn’t in line with the bands performance. While they did seem to be there to play their songs and leave, they did so very well.
They kicked it up a notch towards the end, with Call It Off, which seemed to stimulate some interest, but unfortunately it came a little too late. Their last 2 or 3 songs seemed to have more purpose; the band was in full swing and it really showed. They are one to watch out for, but unfortunately didn’t go down with the crowd as well as I would have expected.
The Audition was up next. People had come to see these guys, so the floor filled up quickly as soon as they started. Danny, their charismatic lead vocalist got the crowd going almost immediately, clapping and singing along barely a minute into their first song. They kept this energy up for the entire set.
They did try a solo at one point, but it seemed to have too much Wah pedal and not enough wow. Not bad, but I wasn’t overly impressed.
They moved onto a couple of new songs, from their new album (“This is a Self-Titled Album”) due out late March. The first one, “The Way That She Moves” is a song to look out for. It did everything right. A catchy chorus and interesting melody, I would expect this one to be big. It deserves to be heard, and hopefully not just because of a car or sofa advert. The next couple, they didn’t give the names for, but from what I heard, it’s an album I will be picking up as soon as I can.
They went down well with everybody at the venue, and left the crowd pumped for tonight’s main event.
After waiting for quite a while, the bands large backdrop was unfurled. It was too big for the wall, and left people with the words “Agon & Iron”, obviously the name of their latest album – Agony & Irony. A couple of minutes later, out came Alkaline Trio
. The crowd was already charged up from the previous bands, and were clearly excited to see them. They started off with Calling All Skeletons from their “Agon & Iron” album. They followed this up with their memorable single from a couple of years ago, Private Eye.
While they played a number of songs I didn’t know, it wasn’t hard to tell why the entire crowd was so energised. Mr Chainsaw was a big favourite, the atmosphere in the room, after the opening chords, was electric.
The crowd’s participation was great, ranging from; a response of “It hasn’t rained in years” at a well timed pause during All On Black; to the band slowing down mid-song to tell everyone the lyrics to sing along to This Could Be ♥. They decided to play a much slower song for the encore, I don’t really know why, but at least it relaxed everyone before the end. Thus ending a great live performance from the entire band.
I’d like to give the night an AA, but they’ll have to settle for a 4/5!