Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Fault lines should be worn with pride

Incubus - Alexandra Palace - 4th November 2011



I'm not a crazy dedicated Incubus fan but I saw them tour Morning View at the Royal Theatre in Canberra years ago and was really impressed with their live show. I haven't had the chance to see them since A Crow Left of the Murder came out. I love that album and have been pretty keen to hear certain tracks performed live. There's not a lot of overlap between mine and J's music taste, but Incubus fall in the small sliver of that particular Venn diagram, so we made the trek up to Alexandra Palace. The evening was off to an exciting start when we discovered Flaming Cactus, among the food concessions, the delicious burrito van that we'd been obsessing about since Reading.

I love it when bands play big venues and utilise the visual equipment. The big screen alternated between prepared clips and live camera shots from on stage which meant that even from a distance, there was plenty to be watching.


There's a new album out and the material from it didn't grab me. But they played Talk Shows on Mute which I love, brought back the best songs from Make Yourself, and included Certain Shade of the Green in the last part of the set. Brandon Boyd is still a sexy sexy man, though the hair's a little dodgy these days, and he seems to enjoy pleasing the crowd by losing the shirt.


There were a few dicks in the crowd. I don't think of Incubus as a thrashy or aggressive band, but we ended up next to a group of fuckwits who insisted upon smashing into everyone around them. Regardless, we left happy. That happiness lasted about half an hour until we and thousands of other Incubus fans got stuck in North London by a tube closure caused by an emergency ahead of us in the line. We had two hours to get back to London Bridge. We spent that two hour sat on a train that wasn't moving, we then joined hundreds of other people fighting to get on a bus, we traversed London on said bus which was crammed full, and got back to London Bridge 10 minutes after the last train. Thank goodness for friends who live in London and have couches and makeshift mattresses.

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