No Ordinary Fool

Yesterday proved to be a red letter one for reducing the “bands that I have yet to see live” list down a little with the appearance of Liars, Efterklang, and Tortoise on the same bill, as part of the weekend-long Analog Festival!

Liars were up first and put down a pulsating set. Front man Angus Andrew was dressed like he had struck lucky with what he had found while rummaging in a skip beforehand. The attire included black boots, crumpled pale blue jeans, an old grey suit jacket, and a pink dress shirt with a white collar and cuffs. His tramp-chic look was made complete by a huge mop of hair and unshaven face! However, Andrew is more than an effective as a front man, with a dynamic presence and expressive style of singing. At one stage, the mic stand almost went flying out into the audience, as he cavorted about!

The band opened their set with Hold Hands And It Will Happen Anyway, which they built up via a long instrumental intro before Andrew, who had kept his back to the crowd until then, exploded into action. Other highlights on the night were Freak Out and Pure Unevil from the new album. The former, Andrew claimed, had been written following a night out in Dublin that seemed to involve drinking and getting arrested. They closed out the show then with the turbo-charged Plaster Casts of Everything, which has to go down as one of the best rock tracks of the year.

Efterklang brought an inevitable change of pace, although there is no shortage of activity on stage. The seven male members of the band were dressed in white shirts and plus fours, with matador-like capes and cravats. In terms of live performance, comparisons with Arcade Fire or Broken Social Scene are inevitable, given how they do play a whole host of instruments (wind, brass, keyboards, strings, percussion, interchange freely, and have that big collective feel to them. However, there is a far less frenetic feel to their music. Although, they are still quite an enthralling band to see live.

Indeed, the crowd seemed to lap it up and the band went from strength to strength as their set progressed. The only disappointment was the very short burst that they gave to Cutting Ice to Snow. It is one of my favourite songs of their current album. However, like the other two bands on the evening, they seemed to have far more songs to play than time to play them in.

Finally, it was the turn of Tortoise to wow the crowd. They hardly spoke a word during their hour-long set, but I found it to be quite a tour-de-force in engrossing, genre-defying instrumental music. I say this with a wry smile now, as it took me the best part of a decade to start to appreciate what this band was doing back in the early nineties!

The set-up on stage had the two drum kits facing each other at the front, with the keyboards at the back, then, flanked on either side by the guitars of Doug McCombs and Jeff Parker respectively. There is something very fundamentally pleasing about watching two drummers beating out rhythms, especially when both seem so at ease with their craft. Even when they switched to the xylophones instead, the effect remained the same.

To be honest, I was spellbound for the entire set – so much so that it seemed to pass by in a blink. It is not often that that happens to me, but there was a calming, hypnotic quality to the music that just drew me in entirely!

And, no, I was as jober as a sudge.

Well…