Well, this one was due to have taken place for me, last week in Dudley, but cars, what can you do with them. Anyway, time to welcome a new car to the fold. It's nice, though I don't think it's totally convinced about me yet, so be nice to it. And of course, I have to throw in a "well I started off late" somewhere, so here's where it goes, and I arrived just as Tribute To Nothing were starting their final song. So no review there then.
Last time I saw Radiator, which also happened to be the first time, they played to a smally disinterested audience supporting Queens of the Stone Age. Tonight was a more marginally interested mob, and certainly a bigger mob, and it worked better. Songs such as Generator, Black Shine, Resistor, and Amnesia sound like they could be pretty good when you've had the time to sit back and listen properly. And with it's mixture of samples and whatever, it worked better with a Pitchshifter audience. The album is released in April, and if you like that rock/semi little bits of dance crossover, then could be well worth checking out.
Judging by the size of the audience, a lot of people have already checked out Pitchshifter's latest and currently greatest. Rio's looks pretty much sold out, which it would seem has been a pretty common occurrence on this current tour. And they deserve it.
Opening with Microwaved, things are pretty much the same as last year, which means it's a shitload of songs from the current album, Triad, Virus and Insects from Infotainment. But tonight they throw in a couple more oldies from Info.. and a cover of XTC's Making Plans For Nigel, which I happen to know, but only from the Primus cover of the same song.
JS claims to be dying up there with the flu, but if he is, well it doesn't really show, apart from a few cracks on the older stuff. He's still imposing and commanding a crowd that also seems to be showing the crossover in the dancing. The stage divers are mixed with the more club oriented style of dancing in a way that surpasses what I've seen before. Though a few of the raps are the same as last year, like "I don't like some stuff, this song is about that, it's cleverly called I don't like it". Though what else can you say I guess.
Pitchshifter may be verging on Genius, but the lighting blokey isn't. Overpowering use of strobes (almost on every fucking beat) means you can barely look at the stage without your retinas being constantly fried. It's the only thing that is a real drawback with the gig tonight.
As ever, there's no encore, instead going right through to the end with WYSIWYG and the best song Pitchshifter have created to date, the awesome Please Sir finishing things off. It looks like after more than a few years, the 'shifter have finally cracked it.
And the car made it home in just over an hour. Nice.