Get Out More.............................Gig Review

MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA (Barfly, Birmingham)

16-02-2008

Just for the record, they aren’t from the North-West at all – they hail from the States actually and have been heavily touted as the NEXT BIG THING. Simon Gray waits to be impressed.

I think the words 'disappointing' and 'struggle' best sum up Manchester Orchestra's appearance at the Barfly last night.

Now don't get me wrong, the band - a Green Day-esque emo skater rock outfit from the USA, which have been getting good reviews for a year or so now - are clearly a good band, with the potential for greatness, but on Tuesday night they just weren't exciting me.

Although they had their share of fans in the crowd, I could tell I wasn't the only one who was underwhelmed, as the concert wasn't without rude heckling from some ignorants asking them if they do any Black Sabbath.

Part of that was the struggle; the band were definitely struggling with the sound (which front of house was ropey at times, and did indeed fail completely at one point), and spent a lot of the time – in fact basically the only verbal communication through the microphone - asking for tweaks to the monitor mix.

Fair enough to want to be able to hear yourselves properly, but there comes a point when you have to accept that you're doing rock & roll in a small venue on the edge of Birmingham.

When you're playing the NIA and each band member has their own personal monitor engineer giving them their own personal monitor mix, then you can hope to expect the perfect on-stage sound, but before then - just learn to deal with it.

Disappointing, because given they were a band from America with the financial backing to organise a whole UK tour in their own right, following on from supporting Kings of Leon last year, I might have
expected something special; a local or even regional band down at the Flapper and probably wouldn't have had such high expectations, but an international tour? Hmmm.

PA problems aside, the sound they made was certainly good enough, with balls and grunge aplenty, but by the end of the show the formula of 'loud', 'quiet', or 'loud and quiet' had become a little tedious, as they seemed to have just those three songs.

The quiet song especially worked the first time to show lead singer Andy Hull's emotional side, but didn't stand repetition, especially not in this venue. Chris Freeman's keyboard sounds were only really audible during the quiet songs - for the rest of the time his only purpose seemed to be to provide backing vocals, tambourine, and to thrash about like a maniac simultaneously playing air guitar, air drums, and air bassoon.

I'll pass over my usual irritation with pub bands with guitarists who need to have at least two changes of axe during the set in order to achieve no discernable change of sound, and skip along to the finale,
and the old 'encore' game which gets tediously played at concerts.

Hull announced the last song, they played it, most of the band left the stage, the audience applauded with a few asking for more, and Hull had just stayed on stage to retune his guitar.

If you're going to play the silly game, at least maintain the myth that you had really intended that to be your last song and are being bashful in basking in the unexpected adoration.

In closing, I think basically the problem was the band have reached a certain stage in their career; there's no doubt they have the potential to go far, but it seems possible that all around them are telling them how good they are, they believe themselves to be at the top of the tree, and they've got a little arrogant, perhaps feeling like they don't need to make the effort. I hope they learn from the experience and grow from it.