AWmusic

I had been waiting to see Ladytron live for a long, long time so even though I wasn’t particularly impressed by Velocifero, I was pretty willing to skip an excellent lecture on the roots of patriarchy to see them.

The venue was filled with every imaginable stereotype you can think of. Teenyboppers (it was an all-ages show), jocks, people who looked like they were here with their kids, scenesters, hipsters, industrial goths proclaiming their individuality by all wearing KMFDM tshirts, etc. It was an interesting mix that I suppose the combination of Ladytron and The Faint made inevitable. I actually thought it was a little weird that Ladytron and The Faint were touring together. True, they’re both loosely of the electronic genre but I find Ladytron so much more mature and serious compared to the Faint.

The Faint lived up to their reputation of putting on a good show. Jacob Thiele chugged more beers than the front row combined and made love to the keyboard all night. Petersen is a good bassist and a hilariously bad dancer. Baechle did a fantastic job on drums. Todd Fink … needs a new stylist. That shirt/robe/dress is waaaay too long.

The crowd loved The Faint and I could feel the vibrations on the intelligently-designed shock-absorbing floor beneath me. Unfortunately, despite the many requests, there was no encore.

The enthusiasm for Ladytron wasn’t quite so high. I guess Ladytron is a lot harder to dance to. This was evident through Marnie’s weirdly seductive jerky shoulder dance. Also, since when are there six members in the band? I only had two beers so don’t question my counting skills.

In fact, here’s another photo. You can only see five of them but that’s still one too many.

They played a lot of songs from the new album which was to be expected. Aroyo’s vocals were spot on. I love her voice, it’s so haunting. Marnie, on the other hand, sounded like she was doing an exaggerated impression of herself. I couldn’t figure out why she sounded so weird until I listened to the album at home again and realized that her voice is kind of raspy/distorted recorded but perfectly clear live. It sounds a lot better with some distortion. This is more obvious with their older albums. Like with “Seventeen”, she sounds soooo different because on the album, she’s almost whispering the lyrics.

Ladytron’s set was too short, in my opinion. There were a lot of songs I wanted to hear that weren’t performed. Even “Destroy Everything You Touch” was saved for the encore. I have to say that The Faint outshined Ladytron but it’s probably because Ladytron’s music is more suited to a mellow evening at home rather than a rambunctious night at the Phoenix.

Ladytron – Ghosts
Ladytron – Deep Blue
The Faint – The Geeks Were Right
The Faint – Forever Growing Centipedes

Tags: concert