Monday, December 31, 2007

Built to Spill @ The Corner, 29/12

Having been a fan of winding fractured indie guitar stalwarts Built to Spill for some years, I was highly anticipating their first visit to Australia.

Their tour Australia kicked off with a show at the Corner on Saturday night. And did it live up to expectations???? Well, kind of.

It was a decent measured performance from the veteran quintet but perhaps a little inconsistent, displaying not only their mind blowingly brilliant yet splintering catchiness but also their sometimes overly introspective jam band tendencies.

Goin Against Your Mind was a major highlight early, the powerful rising ebb n flow dynamic energy accentuated after the band opened with three of their sharper, poppier numbers. Made Up Dreams was a perfect chaser.

The middle section however sagged a bit. It was probably to be expected with such a long set (approx 2 hours) in such heat, playing their intense meandering tunes but I wonder if meaty versions of Some or Mess With Time would have jolted me back into consciousness. In fairness to the band, the momentum wasn’t helped by some technical difficulties and the passing out of a dude down the front, both of which appeared to drag out the pauses between songs.

The band recovered their panache to end superbly with two of their best tracks, Conventional Wisdom and Carry the Zero, but the encore was a major disappointment. Randy Described Eternity started off in a blast but ended up floating around for far too long in improvised limbo.

Earlier in the evening, The Crayon Fields played OK, and it was great to hear previews of some of their new tracks, but, at the moment they are too shy to be a successful live act in front of such a large audience.

Gareth Liddiard, was his laconic, slurred yet intense self, sitting down and playing The Drones’ tracks solo over on the side stage. Unsurprisingly he could barely be seen or heard above the chatty and somewhat muscular crowd.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said:

Thanks for your review. I'm really looking forward to seeing them in Sydney later this week!

I hate to ask... But no Car?

3:19 am  
Blogger Pat said:

It was in the middle somewhere. A stripped back version.

I think I'm missing out one or two towards the end, but the set went something like this:

Liar
In the Morning
Center of the Universe
Goin Against Your Mind
Made Up Dreams
Third Uncle (Brian Eno cover)
Nowhere Nothin Fuckup
Car
Time Trap
Conventional Wisdom
Carry The Zero
Randy Described Eternity

7:01 am  

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