By Jase Walker
Riverside are a band that I’ve somehow missed every opportunity to see live for the last six years, but not on this occasion! As part of their multiple date run through the UK and some European dates, I’ve got myself down to Manchester’s Academy 2 venue to catch them for an evening of extended proggy goodness. No support on this run either, I’ve had a quick check of the set to see how long I’m in for and the whole thing clocks in at over two hours! So I suppose better late than never for seeing these live eh? Especially with such a lengthy set!
After standing and listening to the intermission music for what seemed to be an eternity of the same music my grandparents used to play on their vinyl players, the stage darkens and Riverside takes the stage. Their keyboard player is drawing my attention already with him joyfully jumping around while playing and constantly making cheeky winks and nods to the audience. I don’t think I’ve seen a band live that’s had this thunderous mix of guitars and powerful keys since seeing Faith No More years ago, their sound is euphoric and for lack of a better term, epic.
In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think this is probably one of the best sounding shows I’ve ever been to. The clarity of what everyone is doing, yet the sheer force behind all of it and yet it’s not deafeningly loud is actually blowing my mind. The light and stage production is fairly minimal overall but still quite effective and great to look at, but there’s something about the sound of this show which has me standing, mouth agape, in complete awe. Not only that but the audience participation parts for singing from the crowd are unbelievably loud, the combined voices of hundreds of people almost drown the band out at times.
As you’d expect with prog, each part of the band gets their time to shine (well, maybe except the drummer), and my favourite part of that is seeing extended keyboard solos. Seeing the keys player going nuts and doing what looks like slapping the keyboard at random while belting out rapid fire notes is a rarer treat for me than I’d like. Also need to specifically mention the between songs banter, they do it fantastically well and genuinely very funny with their sardonic self-deprecating humour. And finally with the encore keeping up the consistent sometimes silly banter, they get the crowd to whisper a scream which they obediently follow through with, definitely a very bizarre thing to hear as well but hilarious though.
So after this lengthy set, which really didn’t feel like it was as long as that speaks for how much I enjoyed this show. Riverside are seasoned pros at their craft, the music is fantastic and while definitely prog, still has plenty of catchy hooks to worm their way into your ears. The sound has been sublime start to finish, I can’t overstate how much of a fantastic show this has been, truly outstanding.
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