All sparks will fade out
Editors are used to playing venues that hold thousands rather than hundreds, so the 200 people at the XFM Live Session at the Water Rats were significantly closer to the action than they would be at a regular Editors gig.
Opening the evening's entertainment was a singer-songwriter called Karima Francis, hailing from Blackpool if the tattoo on her neck was anything to go by. She had a really pure voice and began proceedings with a beautiful song called The Author and was rewarded by an almost silent audience. She seems really personable and was joking and interacting with the audience very comfortably. The 5 song acoustic set went down surprisingly well with an audience primed and ready for some loud rock music - check her out on myspace here to hear what caught their attention.
Just after 9pm Editors took to the stage and performed a set lasting just over an hour. They got a great reception from the crowd with a mini mosh pit forming at the front, and the biggest reaction saved for All Sparks and Munich, the biggest hits from their Mercury Prize nominated 2005 album The Back Room, and closing number Papillion.
Editors continues a trend I have noticed recently in several others (most famously Das Pop and Noah and The Whale) where one member of the band looks like they are actually supposed to be part of a different group entirely. In Editors, this role is filled by their bass player Russell Leetch, who looked a little bit like a public school boy and wore a granddad collared shirt, which stood out like a sore thumb amongst the black-t-shirted-indie-rock vibe of the rest of the band. Strange.
Also strange was the mix of fans the band seemed to have attracted. Only a small number were heavily tattooed goth rockers; at the front there seemed to be a high proportion of both large sweaty men, and woman in their early 30s, with younger kids (late teenage, early 20s) slotting in just behind.
Editors put on a good show and front man Tom Smith is certainly a showman and has a fantastic voice. His posturing was positively snake-like and he sort of writhed across the stage, seemingly dislocating his jaw at least once every 5 minutes and looked like he could have swallowed a watermelon whole. But for all the intimacy of the small venue, he didn't engage with the audience much at all. The guys all seemed to be excellent musicians and spanned both guitar based music and electronica, but what disappointed me about the gig was the lack of texture and contrast in the performance. Everything was loud, like a wall of sound pounding you around the ears. And I felt that they lost some of the subtly and impact that could have been achieved if there had been just a bit more variation in the volume - more light and shade please. Interestingly I did get this from their records but in a relatively short set they seemed to get overrun over by the noise and the sound.
But a good concert (if not a great one) and thanks again to Barclaycard for providing me with another free night out.
Editors' third album, In This Light and On This Evening, is out now.
Sunday 31 January 2010
Friday 8 January 2010
Being Human Series 2 Preview @ Curzon Mayfair
OK, so I know it's not music January is always a slow gig month...
Being Human has always been slightly ahead of the curve when it comes to the current trend for all things vampire related. The BBC Three show following the lives of a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost trying to live normal lives began as a single pilot episode back in 2008 and was commissioned for a full series following really strong support from the online community. Being Human has a really strong fanbase in the virtual world, with a very active blog on the BBC website, lots of extra videos, articles, interviews and the like, whetting the appetite of the hundreds of online fans for the second series which launches on BBC Three on Sunday at 9.30pm.
To celebrate this, an exclusive preview of the first episode was held last night in Mayfair, allowing a couple of hundred excited fans the opportunity to see it before anyone else. Intermingling with the fans were a whole cast of characters from the world of Being Human, all familiar to the fans – security staff from the creepy CeSSa (Centre for the Study of Supernatural Activity, which has had it’s own website in the run up to Series 2) checking for anything out of the ordinary, a tea making ghost (mush to the approval of those queuing outside in sub-zero temperatures who were rewarded with hot drinks), a vampire and a werewolf, as well as an attack in need of medical treatment. The main cast were all there and took to the stage just before the screening, much to the approval of the excited audience, doing their thank yous and generally looking slightly uncomfortable with all the attention.
The show itself picked up directly after the end of series one, where George the werewolf, played by the excellent Russell Tovey, had killed the dangerous leader of the vampires, Herrick, and all is ‘back to normal’. A short montage went over the key points from the previous episodes, before focusing back on the lives of George, vampire Mitchell (played by the devastatingly attractive Aiden Crichlow), and ghost Annie (Lenora Turner, whose performance hits just the right combination of stir crazy).
The great strength of the show is the struggle of the characters to live normal existences despite their ‘conditions’, and not letting them take over their whole lives (or in the case of Annie, death). The main focus of Episode 1 on the relationship between George and his girlfriend Nina, who he has inadvertently turned into a werewolf without realising. Well, it could happen to anyone really. Sinead Keenan turns in a sensitive performance in the role of Nina, coming to terms with the reality of what is happening to her, and I’m pleased to say that there has been an improvement in the prosthetics and CGI arena, which was the only thing lacking from Series 1 and made the werewolf transformations much more watchable. The menacing presence of an organisation hunting down supernatural beings was introduced, the undercurrents of which were bubbling under the surface of the happy conclusion reached at the end of the episodes.
It will be interesting to see how the series develops with 4 main characters rather than 3, as Nina is now a member of the household. The character of Mitchell certainly had less story time than in previous episodes, although there was a lot of set up storylines yet to come. It certainly opens up a number of changes in the balance of power between the main characters and with it a number of new directions become possible. The endearing quality of Being Human is how funny it is, and there were several laugh out loud moments throughout the episode – why a naked Russell Tovey should be funny I have no idea as he is looking pretty fine, but it is. Actually, the nudity and the sex seemed to be a bit more graphic than the previous series and I’m not surprised that the age limit for the preview was 16. The show stood up really well on the big screen and it certainly has a cinematic quality...Being Human the movie anyone??
Series 2 of Being Human starts on Sunday 10th January @ 21.30
Being Human has always been slightly ahead of the curve when it comes to the current trend for all things vampire related. The BBC Three show following the lives of a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost trying to live normal lives began as a single pilot episode back in 2008 and was commissioned for a full series following really strong support from the online community. Being Human has a really strong fanbase in the virtual world, with a very active blog on the BBC website, lots of extra videos, articles, interviews and the like, whetting the appetite of the hundreds of online fans for the second series which launches on BBC Three on Sunday at 9.30pm.
To celebrate this, an exclusive preview of the first episode was held last night in Mayfair, allowing a couple of hundred excited fans the opportunity to see it before anyone else. Intermingling with the fans were a whole cast of characters from the world of Being Human, all familiar to the fans – security staff from the creepy CeSSa (Centre for the Study of Supernatural Activity, which has had it’s own website in the run up to Series 2) checking for anything out of the ordinary, a tea making ghost (mush to the approval of those queuing outside in sub-zero temperatures who were rewarded with hot drinks), a vampire and a werewolf, as well as an attack in need of medical treatment. The main cast were all there and took to the stage just before the screening, much to the approval of the excited audience, doing their thank yous and generally looking slightly uncomfortable with all the attention.
The show itself picked up directly after the end of series one, where George the werewolf, played by the excellent Russell Tovey, had killed the dangerous leader of the vampires, Herrick, and all is ‘back to normal’. A short montage went over the key points from the previous episodes, before focusing back on the lives of George, vampire Mitchell (played by the devastatingly attractive Aiden Crichlow), and ghost Annie (Lenora Turner, whose performance hits just the right combination of stir crazy).
The great strength of the show is the struggle of the characters to live normal existences despite their ‘conditions’, and not letting them take over their whole lives (or in the case of Annie, death). The main focus of Episode 1 on the relationship between George and his girlfriend Nina, who he has inadvertently turned into a werewolf without realising. Well, it could happen to anyone really. Sinead Keenan turns in a sensitive performance in the role of Nina, coming to terms with the reality of what is happening to her, and I’m pleased to say that there has been an improvement in the prosthetics and CGI arena, which was the only thing lacking from Series 1 and made the werewolf transformations much more watchable. The menacing presence of an organisation hunting down supernatural beings was introduced, the undercurrents of which were bubbling under the surface of the happy conclusion reached at the end of the episodes.
It will be interesting to see how the series develops with 4 main characters rather than 3, as Nina is now a member of the household. The character of Mitchell certainly had less story time than in previous episodes, although there was a lot of set up storylines yet to come. It certainly opens up a number of changes in the balance of power between the main characters and with it a number of new directions become possible. The endearing quality of Being Human is how funny it is, and there were several laugh out loud moments throughout the episode – why a naked Russell Tovey should be funny I have no idea as he is looking pretty fine, but it is. Actually, the nudity and the sex seemed to be a bit more graphic than the previous series and I’m not surprised that the age limit for the preview was 16. The show stood up really well on the big screen and it certainly has a cinematic quality...Being Human the movie anyone??
Series 2 of Being Human starts on Sunday 10th January @ 21.30
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