Liars concert was fantastic. Quick review.
The opening band was called Bambara, and they truly kicked ass and went over great with the crowd. They clearly subscribe to the Birthday Party/Jesus Lizard school, and put their own spin on it - namely, speed and volume. Talk about high energy. I've seen faster drummers, and I've seen louder drummers, but I don't think I've seen a drummer combine speed and power to quite the degree of this guy. The bass player played those great low-end Tracy Pew slabs of groove. Two guitarists spent a good amount of the time just making weird noises, not dissimilar to Rowland S Howard. And the singer was kind of a maniac too, albeit very professional. His out of control behavior was always under control and geared towards involving the crowd. A great frontman.
Since I liked Bambara so much, imagine my pleasant surprise when it turns out that 2/5 of that band return to the stage to back up Angus as the Liars. The drummer (yay!) and the singer (now acting as multi-instrumentalist and backup vocalist) both pummeled their way through a decidedly rockin' Liars set. Angus came out in his wedding dress, and kept it on for the whole show. He was totally in charge and rocked the place like crazy. The set list tended slightly towards the rock side of things as opposed to the experimental electronics, though the electronics were a constant presence and really captured the feel of the albums more closely than I expected. Some of the sounds on the records almost sound like lucky accidents (e.g. the beginning of Broken Witch, which was the last song of the night), but they were reproduced faithfully here.
I remember 1 song from the debut (Mr You're on Fire Mr), 1 from Drowned (Broken Witch), 2 from Drum (Drum Gets a Glimpse was the opener, also played It Fit When I Was a Kid), 3 each from Liars and Sisterworld, 1 from Wixiw (Brats), 2 from Mess (Mess on a Mission, Can't Hear Well), and just 1 from the new album (Cred Woes), though I think Crying Fountain was playing on the PA as the band initially came onstage. There were a couple of b-sides I think too, that sounded familiar but I couldn't quite place them.
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