august 19 2008
thunderbird stadium
After about 4 years of worshipping the entire career of my holy grail of favorite bands, I finally caught them live, in the rain, at Thunderbird Stadium. While some 25 000 people may have been disillusioned by the ultimately shitty weather elements of the show, I will argue with anyone who stands in my way and says that it impeded the quality of their performance. On the contrary, the humid and warm summer rain gave Thom Yorke's vocals a wet, throaty texture to his usual characteristic papery delivery. Further, and perhaps I should have mentioned this first, it reinforced the dreary nature of their music, which ultimately suggests an incurable optimism that things will and have the potential to be better. To quote Voltaire, "All is for the best in this best of all possible worlds," and fuck I don't care that I got drenched because the show was bloody cathartic as hell.
The set list was perfect; while heavily weighted by songs from their latest album In Rainbows, the quartet played a range from The Bends, OK Computer, the jazzier Amnesiac and surprisingly even from their contributions to the Baz Lurhman film Romeo and Juliet.
While it may seem trivial, I would be remiss if I didn't comment on the lighting engineering of the set. Brilliant lateral lighting sequences flashed almost mathematically, emphasizing the plurality of sounds from In Rainbows, encompassing the multiple realizability of the universe.
I really can't say anything bad about this show. Who gives a fuck that the rain shat down on us all?
No comments:
Post a Comment