Supported By KVB
KVB were new to me despite not being new at all, starting
out in fact in 2010. They are officially an ‘audio\visual’ act consisting of
Nicholas Wood on guitar and Kat Day on keyboards who stand in front of a big screen
on which they project the visual part of the deal.
The audio bit is very electronic but perhaps with a touch of Jesus and Mary Chain. It’s rather atmospheric but not that exciting and with there being just the two of them and no drummer they seemed quite reliant on backing tracks particularly the drum track which frequently drowned out the guitar. So reliant in fact that I successfully Shazam-ed several of their tracks which is always a bit of a giveaway but they were a pleasant enough warm up act.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen the Editors and I’ve only
just discovered their excellent new album 'EBM' from which no less than seven of
the nine songs are played tonight. Their sound has changed over time and they
lost me a bit at some point around album five. The new record has a different feel to their
earlier ones but it still sounds very much like an Editors record.
They open with a double salvo from 'EBM' with ‘Heart Attack’ and ‘Strawberry Lemonade’ and then after a brief divert into ‘Bones’ we get the wonderful ‘Karma Climb’ and ‘Picturesque’.
While it’s great to hear ‘The Boxer’ from ‘In This Light And
On This Evening’ it is also only one of two, the other being ‘Papillon’ of
course, but then clearly they can’t play everything.
One chap down the front doesn’t think they should be playing
everything; in fact he heckles only for the first two albums. So the wonderful ‘Sugar’ doesn’t
shut him up but then when the band deliver a mid set triple from ‘The Back
Room’ - ‘Fingers In The Factories’, ‘Blood’ and ‘Bullets’ that takes absolutely no
prisoners. Surely he’s going to be happy? No. He
probably needs to buy more music.
By now I’m hooked on ‘Magazine’ from 2018’s ‘Violence’ which I didn’t know. After which the band disappears and Tom Smith does an acoustic double of ‘Nothing’ the only other track off ‘The Weight of Your Love’ bar ‘Sugar’ and an acoustic ‘Lights’ leading us into the band doing the ‘Silence’ off ‘EBM’.
The set could well have ended after the double from ‘An End
Has a Start’ - ‘Smokers Outside the Hospital Doors’ and ‘Racing Rats’ but they
kept going with two more from 'EBM' ‘Kiss’ and closing ‘Strange Intimacy’ wrapped
around ‘Violence’ and ‘No Harm’ from their later albums.
The encore is very predictable but still punchy - ‘An End
Has A Start’ and ‘Munich’ before ‘Papillon’ sends us home.
Posts
.JPG)
