Full On Idle

The Breeders - Glasgow ABC, 8th April

To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from this show having missed the last 2 Scottish shows that the band played. Also since the last 2 Breeders albums have been resolutely lo-fi I did wonder how they were going to transfer to the live setting. In the end it was a good show but not a great one.

Songwise it was a fairly up tempo selection but for some reason the set never really caught fire until the last third. ‘Cannonball’ was undoubtedly the first great moment and from then on, the band barely put a foot wrong in the closing run. The encores were nice too, a stripped down ‘Here No More’ definitely being the highlight. But looking back on what was played, I feel the whole show should have been better.

Certainly soundwise it was a strange, mixed bag. At times it was, if you’ll forgive the pun, bang on (‘Cannonball’/’Pacer’) but at others Kim’s vocals were completely lost in the mix (‘Safari’/’Shocker’). Occasionally a song was overpowered by the bass (‘Night of Joy’) and ‘Divine Hammer’ was a bit all over the place.

But I don’t think the problem was that a third of the songs are taken from the new LP since, by and large, that material came over well. The again maybe the relative unfamiliarity of the crowd with the record did dampen reactions a bit although the only song I didn’t know, the GBV cover ‘Shocker In Gloomtown’ , was a rare out and out rocker and easily the most immediate song of the night.

It was pretty short too, at just an hour. As the Vinyl Villain commented, when a band plays live on the back of four LPs (or five if you count the Amps’ LP from which 2 cuts were taken) you would probably normally expect an hour and a quarter. Yet there aren’t many bands that play more than 20 songs in a set.

So, all things considered it was a good night and I certainly would go and see them again but equally I’m sure they’ll play better shows on this tour.

Breeders Setlist

1. Overglazed 2. Bang On 3. Tipp City 4. No Aloha 5. Huffer 6. Walk It Off 7. We’re Gonna Rise 8. Pacer 9. Shocker In Gloomtown 10. Night of Joy 11. Divine Hammer 12. Cannonball 13. Happiness Is A Warm Gun 14. Iris 15. I Just Wanna Get Along 16. Saints 17. Safari

Encore
18. Here No More 19. Fortunately Gone 20. German Studies

Support earlier came from Jim Noir. From the name and the little I’d read I did not expect a set of 60’s hippy pop but that’s what we got. Inoffensive certainly but equally inessential.

Here are a couple of songs played last night:

The Amps - Tipp City (from ‘Pacer’) [Buy or download it]

The Breeders- Cannonball (from ‘Last Splash’) [Buy or download it]

Photos from the show now available here.

~ by manicpopthrills on April 8, 2008.