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Cross-posted elsewhere, but I thought I should share some impressions of the Scala gig - 10, to be precis.
1. The atmosphere was great - the whole thing felt like an event, which of course it was. Y'know, somehow I doubted that there were many people there who did not have a fiery love for The Knife in their hearts. Then again, I'm always inclined to think the best of people at gigs, especially the kind of people who get dismissed as "hipsters".
2. They started with 'Pass It On', only I'm sure the music was the start of 'Silent Shout' at first, or at least it certainly didn't sound like the backing to 'Pass It On'. I have no evidence that this was a deliberate piece of wrong-footing, but it wouldn't surprise me, especially as how it particularly wrongfooted those who had heard the rumour that this gig would simply be a performance of the Silent Shout album.
3. They played an absolutely perfect version of 'We Share Our Mother's Health' as their third song, and the crowd went predictably nutso. Someone I was with couldn't believe they were playing what a lot of people have come to see as the obvious big pop hit in waiting (if only) from the new album so early on, but I think they just decided to blow people's heads off early.
4. Any worries I had about their ability to make the slower, quieter, creepier stuff fit in with their dancier numbers - well, they were completely unfounded. This did give the show an atmosphere almost unlike any I've known, though, stuff like 'The Captain' merging eerily into things that made you need to move (and we did). It was all very much like being in the Best Haunted House Ever Evah!!11!
5. On that note, it's worth mentioning that they were playing behind a semi-transparent black screen, onto which graphics were projected (patterns, but also cheery things like streams of red liquid - see part of point 10). They were also wearing some kind of black-and-white face masks, or face paint, or maybe it was just balaclavas... Anyway, they were hard to recognise, and spooky as hell. Even spookier was the mournful holographic face projected onto the stage, which changed form between songs, sometimes skeletal, and which mouthed along to the guest vocals in a magnificent version of 'Marble House'.
6. 'Forest Families' is one of my favourite songs released so far this year. It feels like it's MINE, like it's personal.
7. After 'Forest Families' they played one song I didn't know, and it was amazing - big, BIG steel drums having the hell beaten out of them, lots and lots of energy, wonderful stuff. (It may have been 'Kino' from the first album, apparnetly.)
8. What sounded like another song I didn't know turned out to be a radically re-arranged version of 'Heartbeats', so that I had to stop halfway through trying to push past people to go to the bar, and start pushing my way back...
9. The whole thing was short - about 45 minutes, ending suddently with 'From Off To On', and that was it, no encore. Another of the rumours flying around had been that the gig would consist of five acts - which it's possible it did, it's just that there weren't clear demarcations between them. Anyway, the point is, it wouldn't have surprised me if the show had gone on for another 45 minutes, or even been 15 minutes shorter. The Knife don't do predictable. Oh, also worth mentioning that they didn't address the audience at any point during the show - the spell remained intact.
10. For the first time in a long time, I *had* to buy a t-shirt. The t-shirt design proves beyond a shadowy shadow of a doubt that The Knife are massive, massive goths. |
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