Saturday, April 26, 2014

Vol. 5 Episode 16.5



Temples with opening acts Drowners & Two Harbors at First Avenue in Minneapolis MN on April 24th, 2014.

I preordered tickets to this concert just after they moved the venue to First Avenue. It had originally been scheduled for The Turf Club. The amount of people that attended the concert would have over filled the small venue of The Turf club. This is why they moved to a larger venue.

I took my father-in-law to see the show. We got there with more than enough time before the show started. We went to check out the merch booth, like I always do. There wasn’t much there. I was surprised. There were a few shirts and full length albums from each band on CD and vinyl. I guess I was disappointed that there weren’t any singles for sale. They are the easiest item to get a band to sign. Carrying around an album all night is so cumbersome in my opinion. I did like that the album from two harbors was pressed on white vinyl though. I didn’t buy anything that night simply because I didn’t know the openers and I already had the album from Temples.

The first opening group, Two Harbors, was a local group. I liked the groups sound. At some points it reminded me of Oasis, at the other points I was not interested. The problem was that the other sound that they had was pretty bland. They are on the right track but still need to flesh out their sound to make it their own. I hadn’t heard of the group before this concert. I am glad that I heard them and look forward to hearing more about them. I am sure that their music will show up on The Currents Local Show. The album that they released, that was at the merch booth, was also special released for RSD 2014 and the group played at both The Electric Fetus and the new record store called Barely Brothers Records.

The second opener is called Drowners. I liked the sound of the group. It reminded me of The Strokes mostly. They all seemed to have that fun sound during that time. What I did not like and found completely disgusting was that the second guitarist had a pension for saving up his spit and making a big fountain happen. Personally, I don’t want to be spit on and if I was a part of the following act I wouldn’t want my equipment spit on either. I enjoyed the music but that was such a gross distraction. I also watched a video that the band put together and there was a shot of him doing this in the video. It was cut so that you couldn’t see the spit flying in the air but I could tell, after seeing the concert, that he was spitting in the air. He must think that this is something cool to do and does it at every concert. What I did like was how animated that the lead singer was. He was the funnest part of the show. He could sing well, play a lot of the lead parts in the songs and had so much fun playing the music. I thought it was great when he was head banging to his own music while playing. He was the highlight of their set for sure.

The headliners, Temples, were not much in the way of flash but played the music in a live setting as well as possible to match the studio setting. I always like it when a band can make the sound of the studio in a live setting. It shows that they are not lying to their fans. I thought it was interesting that they were so surprised at the amount of people at the show. At one point, early in the show, the lead singer, James Bagshaw, said that they were, "Playing to a bigger crowd than we'd get in Liverpool.” Then he said, “We should move here." The crowd loved that remark and a nice bond was created because of that. The group didn’t have much to say after that but played some amazing music still. As I had mentioned in my previous posts about the group, They have a trippy 60s era sound to their music. I have likened them to both Sabbath and T Rex in those earlier posts. Everybody seemed to be dressed down except for Bagshaw. He was dressed in black with a jacket that had mirror ball sequins on it. It was very queue and drew attention to him through most of the night.

The sampled clapping that starts off A Question Isn’t Answered got the crowd moving. The lead singer tried to get the crowd to clap along but they didn’t really pick it up at all. I think the problem was that most people had drinks in their hands making it hard to clap at all. James made an off hand comment about, “I’ll just clap alone then.” I thought it was kind of a disappointment but the song still went off with out a hitch.

They did play a couple of B sides too. I always like it when groups can play their B side tracks. To me, it means that they like all of their songs not just the ones on the regular albums. I think that their B sides are just as good as the regular songs anyway. I think all of their songs have pretty and unique melodies that stick in your head. This is a good thing since the music is so beautiful. I can’t recommend going to see them or getting their new album enough. This is some of the best music that I have heard in a while.

Temples set list:
Colours To Life
Prisms
Sun Structures
A Question Isn’t Answered
Ank
Move With The Season
Keep In The Dark
Sand Dance

Encore:
Mesmerise
Shelter Song

I am sorry about the sad quality of the pictures, I am not the best photographer.
If you want a different perspective check out what City Pages had to say on the concert.

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