Manchester Apollo's review on Klaxons last night!

WITH band reformations becoming a daily occurrence in the music industry, one may ask – is there enough new talent coming through?

The answer is yes, and the sound of 2007 has belonged to the electronic axis of London, Paris and Berlin.

We’ve enough identikit guitar bands to last us a lifetime, so it’s a thrill to see Klaxons progress from in-joke scenesters to their current leftfield pop star status.

But strip everything away (the day-glo outfits, the nu-rave tag and NME/Mercury awards) and Klaxons are an old-fashioned pop band, with brilliant songs that get under your skin for months.

Main support Simian Mobile Disco know this city well, having formed around University degrees in Manchester and enjoying their formative years as Simian playing our toilet venues

The duo are visibly choked to be performing at theatre level, and their pounding, beat-driven acid-dance is the perfect warm up for tonight’s largely teenage crowd. On the Apollo’s hefty soundsystem, SMD sound huge.

Pulse

Where SMD provide tonight’s electronic pulse, Klaxons get to work with punky, aggressive intent on opener ‘The Bouncer’.

Bassist and singer Jamie Reynolds powers his way through bass parts while cajoling guitarist Simon Taylor-Davies and cute keyboardist James Righton into frenzied vocals and instrumentation.

‘Atlantis To Interzone’ follows sharply, another heavy beast of a tune which sees Reynolds fighting off glow stick missiles with his bass.

While their faster, more edgy songs show Klaxons’ early post-punk upbringing, their best moments tonight come in the crystalline pop of ‘Golden Skans’ and the claustrophobic dystopia of ‘Magick’.

As the night draws to a close, ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ sounds the perfect anthem for our loved-up teen-rave generation, while a thrilling take on Grace’s ‘It’s Not Over Yet’ underlines Klaxons’ out-there pop brilliance.




glow stick stings if it gets in your eyes.

don't get glow stick juice in your eye.

Leave Before the Lights Come On

IT’S a measure of the modesty of the Arctic Monkeys that, when they could fill Anfield and Goodison Park combined, they chose to showcase second album Favourite Worst Nightmare here in front of just 1,200 fan-club devotees...

Arctic Monkeys and The Little Flames, Carling Academy Liverpool, Saturday April 14

Arctic Monkeys have never played by the rules. What with making their name on the internet, releasing a mere two singles from their all-conquering debut and displaying utter contempt for corporate award shows, the big book of rock and roll clichés must have got lost in the post on its way to Sheffield.
Little wonder then, that after swaggering onto stage just after 9.30pm, they should kick-off with little-known B-side If You Found This It’s Probably Too Late.
New single Brianstorm (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0Dhf... followed before a return to familiar ground with Still Take You Home (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50iip... met with a predictably fervent response.
Dressed in a white v-neck and faded jeans, Alex Turner could be mistaken for any other skinny student in the crowd and his rapport with his army of loyal fans is not exactly of the stadium rock variety.
It’s hard to imagine Bono addressing the masses with “ey up, share it around greedy guts” after tossing his bottle of water into the overheated crowd, but then the Monkeys’ accessibility has always been their strong point.
The potential of this band – average age 21 – is frightening.
And when an almost-apologetic Turner promised to “froth it up a bit” after introducing another new tune, froth it up they did, with the three-song run of A View From The Afternoon, Fake Tales Of San Francisco and When The Sun Goes Down almost tearing the roof off the Academy.
With the sweat dripping from the ceiling, A Certain Romance seemed to bring the evening to a close, only for the lads to unexpectedly return minutes later to encore with new album closer 505 to a half-empty venue.
A few hundred souls will be wishing they hadn’t left before the lights came on.

It would have been nice to see the Monkeys revive their collaboration on Put Your Dukes Up John (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-N_5... with excellent support act The Little Flames, first heard at the Deltasonic Christmas gig.

CHECK OUT MY VIDEOS!

If You Were There, Beware - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAw0S...
I Bet That You Look Good On The Dancefloor - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKCIO...
Mardy Bum - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rak6_...
Balaclava - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LbKb...
From The Ritz To The Rubble - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qjxu...
Still Take You Home - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50iip...
Brianstorm - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0Dhf...

The Little Flames
Put Your Dukes Up John - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-N_5...

So, off we went with our sparckling new sat nav to manchester...right, normaly that would be a good start to a good review. And normally (or not) i would sit down and right a good blog about the gig...but i just can’t be arsed...so here’s manchester evening news’ review.

KEANE'S brand of uplifting yet melancholic rock has a nice way of gently burning itself into your favour.

The listener who thinks they don't care for them might themselves singing "oh simple thing, where have you gone?", or some other snippet of a piano-driven plea when the time seems apt.

This could be just the mark of a 'good singles band', although doubtless a lot of the 15,000 people who saw them at the M.E.N. Arena on Sunday night would tell you they are much more than that.

In the opening minutes the boys from Battle played breakthrough track Everybody's Changing, and despite the crowd's rapture, it seemed to lose a little of its plaintive quality in such a big hall. (SHWRWP NO IT DIDN’T IT WAS AWESOME)

But, in the show that followed, the band walked the line between the anthemic and the intimate so deftly all other thoughts of that bent disappeared.

About six tracks in, after the bells of 'lighters in the air' track Try Again had faded(THIS WAS ONE OF THE BEST SONGS OF THE NIGHT), the band disappeared before re-emerging on a platform closer to the audience and launching into an acoustic set featuring Your Eyes Open.

Spotlights

An orb-like balloon hovered above as spotlights lit up the players (IT LOOKED LIKE A BIG ONION)...i thought onions were going to come out of it...,, and suddenly the arena seemed smaller.

Then, when Hamburg Song, featuring church-like organ, contrasted arrestingly with Fly To Me, its wistful lyric suddenly lifted by thumping drums and driving keys, it became clear Keane were giving a masterclass in modern, credible stadium rock.

Hypnotic displays helped their cause. Haunting images of vintage dancers, gliding in gas masks, beamed from a screen shaped like the pipes of an organ during A Bad Dream (IT WAS SMAAART), as star-like lights of many colours flared.

More apocalyptic images flickered behind Atlantic, before the strangled guitar and crashing attitude of Under the Iron Sea cranked things up another gear.

Frontman Tom Chaplin's voice soared wonderfully through The Lonely Soldier and Somewhere Only We Know, while cohorts Richard Hughes and Tim Rice-Oxley kept the drums and keys pulsing beautifully throughout.

Ever the nice chap, Tom Chaplin was very complimentary about Manchester, recalling with fondness Keane's first gig in the city at a small venue, only three years ago. It's been a rapid rise to M.E.N. Arena status, and on the strength of their live performance, well deserved.


there...could’t have said it better myself...well i probably could...but ah well. it really was a truly amazing gig, wont be forgetting it in a hurry!