Surely the mark of a great record is how many times it has been stolen from you. By my count, I have purchased The Rapture’s Echoes three times now and after seeing them at The Metro on Friday night, I’m going to have to buy it again because predictably when I went to obsess over it the next day, it wasn’t there. Don’t get me wrong, the last Rapture record Pieces of The People We Love was one of the best soundtracks to last summer, and featured some nigh-perfect pop songs that if anyone hated, they must have been a little bit dead inside. At Friday’s show however, it was the songs of their first album Echoes that I appreciated the most, namely I think because The Rapture were enjoying them more too.
In spite of the fact that they were here with the V Festival last year, these Rapture dates were their first solo shows in Australia and those at the soldout Metro gig were in good spirits, no doubt aided by the fact that it was Friday night. Support DJ and friend KIM added to the ‘Thank Fark It’s Friday’ vibe with a seamless mix that easily fused together some de-cheesed 90s house and electro flooziness to get the party people dancing (and the bloke next to me reminiscing about the glory days of Hacienda). So accordingly, by the time The Rapture took the stage, there was a lot of love in the room and from the get go, the crowd was in full throat, belting out every lyric from Pieces of the People We Love. This was fortunate since it took a few songs to get the sound right, with the vocals and bass of Mattie Safer struggling to be heard in the mix, so luckily they had the audience to back them up.
Maybe it was a combination of the relentless karaoke accompanying the Pieces songs, and maybe that The Rapture seemed to have a touch of tour fatigue with this album, but the show as whole for me didn’t seem to take off until about halfway through with a blistering Whoo! Alright. That said, this is a song all about just shutting up and dancing, so maybe it was just a timely reminder for the ol’ inner critic. But the mojo really seemed to be more there for Echoes tracks like Sister Saviour and House of Jealous Lovers. The Rapture spaz out like no one else and when they abandon themselves to that album’s dark disco wigouts of synths, guitar, frenzied vocal whoops and rhythm assault, to the point where it’s hard to wipe the big dumb grin off your face.
To be fair, to say that The Rapture were a little flat overall is like saying an ADD kid doesn’t seem himself because he’s only jogging on the spot instead of climbing the walls. For the entire show Vito Roccoforte looked like he was playing the drums sitting on a pogo stick and collectively, The Rapture are more playful and joyous playing music at their worst than most aspiring partystarter bands could ever be. I guess I was comparing this show to their set at the V Festival a year ago when Pieces was a brand new toy and a sea of loose, madly-dancing festival goers made The Rapture one of the best sets on a day of stupidly good music. They must have good memories too because Matt smilingly announced to the Metro crowd that Australia was so great last time, The Rapture had to come back to play their own show.
Certainly, the Metro audience seemed like happy, all-singing, all-clapping campers as the encore closed with a basstastic blowout of First Gear. Most folks just want to have fun on a Friday night, the bigger and dumber the better, and at a minimum, The Rapture always deliver on that front. I also walked out very much looking forward to seeing what they do next and haven’t been able to keep pieces of their songs out of my head since: the fallout of an above-average holding pattern show from a definitely above average band.
kev0069 says...
i should of gone : (