Interpol, Life On The Balcony: More View, Less Bass

Seeing Interpol in November last year was one of those life changing moments. I went from liking them to loving them, and loving them so much that I was instantly in a panic over whether I'd ever get to see them again. As it turns out that wasn't much of a problem, as their tour took them away from the UK but then back again in the early part of the new year, so I was online straight away getting tickets for Leeds in March.

In what seems like a bizarre decision, having seen them in Newcastle in the mosh with my 2'6" baby niece, I decided to get balcony tickets this time as I'd be with my 5'10" wife. How would the balcony compare to the mosh? Well hopefully it'd give a better view - the entire Newcastle concert had appeared as a back-lit silhouette and we'd barely seen the faces of band, let alone Dan Kessler's groovy footwork.

We got to Leeds O2 close to doors opening and got more-or-less straight in. First impressions were that Leeds O2 was a bit minging compared to Newcastle. You stuck to the floor as soon as you entered the building and you were nowhere near the bar or arena by then. By the time you reached those parts of the building the stickiness was almost superglue in strength and you stood still at your own peril. It at least explained the bag-search at the door - worried someone was trying to smuggle in cleaning products!

Other than that it was quite a nice building, internally the architecture, layout and lighting surpass Newcastle. We got seats in the second row of the balcony, which gave an excellent view, though I was slightly tempted by the standing that was available behind the side rows of seats. The fact that standing there for a few hours would probably mean I'd have to leave my shoes behind when I left persuaded me otherwise.

After almost and hour and a half of nothing the support act came on and the evening's entertainment finally began. Matthew Dear was someone I'd never heard of, let alone heard, so I didn't really know what to expect. What followed, therefore, was all the more surprising. I just sat and watched almost open-mouthed, the sound and stage presence that he generated being quite mesmerising. I particularly liked the trumpet (? - I'm no brass expert) that featured on many tracks. I donwloaded (legally, from iTunes) his album when I got home - it's good, but nowhere near as good as the live show, and I don't really notice the trumpet on it.

Matthew Dear and his trumpet player

So he came and went, and after a further (relatively) short interval Inperpol were finally on. The setlist was much the same as in Newcastle - the best tracks are the best tracks, so you can't change a set too much. The differences between the sets were that C'mere, Hands Away and Specialist replaced Length of Love, Not Even Jail and NYC. Good in some ways, especially as Specialist seemed to be the most "requested" song at both concerts, but bad in that Length Of Love is my favourite track and was omitted.

Paul Banks, Interpol

The view was indeed better and we got to see Kessler's footwork in all its glory, as well as being able to actually see the band's faces. All tracks were performed immaculately, though as always at these smaller venues, the vocals sometimes got a bit overpowered by the music. The bass was a lot less prominent on the balcony than it had been in Newcastle's mosh too - only to be expected I guess, due to the large difference in distance from the speakers. This totally changed the feel of the concert, and feel is the right word. The deep base resonated your whole body so you did indeed "feel" the concert when closer to the front, and it was that that had really grabbed me at Newcastle.

Paul Banks, Daniel Kessler & Sam Fogarino, Interpol

So this ranks as my second favourite concert of all time, after the Newcastle one, though if you take into account the much better support act then maybe it could be up there as equal first.

Guitar change for Mr Kessler... Must mean Slow Hands is on its way...

Setlist

1. Success
2. Say Hello To The Angels
3. C'mere
4. Hands Away
5. Barricade
6. Rest My Chemistry
7. Evil
8. Lights
9. Narc
10. Summer Well
11. Take You On A Cruise
12. Specialist
13. The Heinrich Maneuver
14. Memory Serves
15. Obstacle 1

Encore:

16. Untitled
17. The New
18. Slow Hands

Apparently Not Even Jail was also planned for the encore but time was against them.

Leeds and Leeds and Leeds!

We went to Leeds yesterday. The primary reason for going was to go to a concert, Interpol, in the evening. We got there early enough to have a little time, and dinner, in the city beforehand and were blessed in that it was a lovely sunny day.

I thought I'd sussed out the car parking well, well enough that the chosen car park was amongst the cheaper options and also very close to the concert venue, so not much of a walk back afterwards. Very convenient for getting onto the A64 too, our route home. What I hadn't managed to ascertain though was that the damned car park locks its gates at 9pm, a fact we didn't realise until after we'd parked. This led to us immediately moving to a different car park, but still cost us £2 for the pleasure.

After triple checking the closing time of car park plan B we finally headed into the city. The first thing that caught our eye was the lovely sunny decking of a pub, overlooking Merrion St. Gardens, so that was us sorted for the next 3/4 hour.

A Beautiful Cuthroat Porter

Merrion St. Gardens

Not long to go before dinner after that, so we had a quick wander around The Victoria Quarter, Leeds most picturesque area. The late afternoon sun streaming in through the stained glass roofs of the arcades made for a lovely way to go window shopping.

After a quick look around and successfully managing to avoid spending anything we headed off for dinner at PizzaExpress on Park Square. It's the first time we've been down that way and I was quite taken by some of the architecture down there, as well as with the square itself.

Dinner at PizzaExpress was faultless as always and also free as always (thank you Tesco). We were finished just in time to get to the O2 Academy right on doors opening time, so no hanging about and (thanks to a strange bit of stewarding) no standing in a long queue, as we were ushered straight to the "express" queue which was supposed to be for O2 customers only.

The concert was fabulous, the blog about it can be seen here.

Interpol

Getting out of Leeds afterwards was a nightmare, Traffic lights every 20 yards always seemed to be on red so progress was slow, but when it speeded up that just confused my sat nav as we were constantly past the junction it wanted me to go down before it had a chance to tell me. Its constant re-caculating of routes didn't help and we were permanently one step behind. Time to go back to basics and use eye and brain to find our way to a road that was at least heading the right way. Once on the M1 it was finally time to engage cruise, disengage brain and waft back home in the minimal amount of traffic that uses the motorway after midnight.