By DJ Astrocreep
Another scorching hot and humid day sees me take the usual jaunt across to Manchester for another personal favourite band in The Mars Volta. With support from Teri Gender Bender, of Les Butcherettes fame, it promised to be an evening of not so accessible musical delight.
First on, our rather excitable support in Teri Gender Bender, who comes on to some shouts as the crowd is starting to build up. Her performance is definitely on the strange side, seeming to confuse a swathe of people, though I actually find it quite intriguing myself. While I don’t speak Spanish to understand those parts, the performance itself is quite enjoyable, with Teri acting like a dynamo all over the stage, never happy to stop in one place for even a second. It feels fairly experimental too, which is where I think it doesn’t hit home so well for some of the crowd – luckily, experimental is definitely my thing! There’s decent applause at the end of her set and a promise of something to come.
Time for our headliner then and it’s actually a bit of a mixed bag, in honesty. The high points are really good, but where they go off into rambling solos and jams definitely dampens the atmosphere. There’s zero crowd interaction until just before the end, though we are quite quick to sing along loudly in the parts where the songs are better known and while I fully get the point of slowing the pace at times, bringing it to what is, in essence, a stop feels almost counterproductive. While I’m personally up for a lot of the more experimental fusion on the night, I do feel like I’m in the minority with that. There are only so many times you can fully dampen things then pick it back up before some fatigue sets in.
The lighting effects work well with the set and it’s quite easy to appreciate the attention to detail with the aspects around the music, it’s still hard to get past some of the musical rambling. There are several fan favourites that blast out, drawing roars of delight from everyone us, but we soon get back to the weird interludes that detract so much for so many people.
Our Live Editor Jase, a long time friend and gig companion of mine, leaves about three-quarters of the way through the set and he is not the only one. If I hadn’t have gotten a glance at a setlist early, I’d have considered doing so myself, as even my own preference for weird and experimental music is pushed beyond its boundaries, simply because 25 minute (difference of set length vs studio versions) is too much. But it comes back to one thing – the highs are really all the way up there. Finishing on ‘Inertiatic ESP’ is a hell of a way to do it and the applause from the crowd is for good reason because of the good bits.
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