Kodaline Live at the Roundhouse

Nothing could have prepared me for the emotional rollercoaster that is Kodaline. I'm not even just talking about their gig at Camden's trendy Roundhouse on Tuesday, I'm talking about the band in general. 

It was around April or May 2014 when I settled down to watch some Coldplay videos on YouTube, and because I'm a sucker for punishment, I watched 'The Scientist' on repeat about 5 times, before deciding to try one of the 'suggested videos', which just happened to be something called 'All I Want' by Kodaline. Ohhhhh, the emotions I'd felt by the end of that video! I mean, that poor freak in the office! And the girl who fell in love with him no matter what anyone else though! It was just so beautiful! And IF I'd been an emotional human being, I'd have been sobbing into my teacup because the world just isn't a nice place. But, I'm not an emotional human being.

Just look at this!!

Anyway. I was as impressed with the rest of the band's album 'In A Perfect World', and what almost did make me sob into my teacup was the delayed realisation that this band, that I was now firmly in love with, had in fact played at T in the Park 2013, which I had attended, without knowing who they were. Oh, the regret. I had spent my afternoon falling asleep to Earth, Wind & Fire rather than crying to 'All I Want'? Great. Either way, I stuck their album on repeat for the next few months, all the while marvelling at the fact that I somehow felt like I'd known this music for my entire life. There are few bands that produce music I'd class as 'so beautiful it hurts', and I'd discovered three: Coldplay, The Shins, and now Kodaline.

It was with a surge of OMG that I find out that Kodaline would be playing in London in mid-Febraury 2015. Unfortunately for me, I slacked and tickets sold out in 30 minutes. Fortunately for me, I was spared having to pay 60 Pounds for a re-sale due to a very useful connection managing to help me get one at face value.

And so I showed up at the Roundhouse to a queue to rival anything I've ever seen at Wembley. Seems I've been completely underestimating this band's popularity. 

Queue or no queue, we managed a spot about 6 rows back, and I had a chance to take in my surroundings. Well, they sure weren't lying when the named the venue. The room is completely circular, with seats in a circle above the back of the standing area - it's basically a mini Royal Albert Hall. Kind of. 

I feel that two opening acts are unnecessary for such a small gig, but luckily they both were entertaining - despite the inability of our group to agree on 'which of the Mispers was the hottest'. Moving along...

Kodaline themselves finally ambled onto the stage in all their Irish glory, and opened with 'Ready', off of their brand new album, 'Coming Up For Air', then straight into 'Love Like This', cue crowd going wild. But it wasn't until 'High Hopes' that I really realised the impact of the band. For I could barely hear them over the sound of the crowd, singing along to every single word. Even me, I almost felt emotions! And the band were just loving it - they love having this kind of power over their poor, defenceless audience!

Whilst we all held our breath and prepared for 'All I Want', they decided to keep playing games with us and instead play 'Brand New Day', and a new song called 'The One', which Steve wrote for a friend's wedding (can you imagine being at that wedding? Can you imagine being that friend?? The emotions, I tell you!).

They warned us that 'Love Will Set You Free' was their last song, and we waited with baited breath (again) for them to come back and play new single 'Honest', and that elusive 'All I Want'. In fact, someone in the audience took it upon themselves to start singing the chorus of the latter, and soon the entire crowd was singing along. I could just imagine the band backstage, giggling little Irish giggles.

It was really quite rude of them to play with our emotions to such an extent as to save 'All I Want' for last. A collective 3000 tried to disguise their tears as 'something in my eye' as Kodaline, accompanied by the Mispers' violinist, broke 3000 hearts.

And so I braved the tube back home, grumbling about the fact that it's almost impossible to get from the Northern Line to the Hammersmith and City, but at the same time quite pleased that way back in 1998, it had been another Irish band - with a singer called Steve - that had sparked my love for music, and now, in 2015, the Irish were still going strong.

Taylor Swift - Out of the Woods

It's my lunch break, and I've just gobbled down last night's Chinese takeaway leftovers in 3.4 minutes flat so that I would still have time to write this post.
So let's cut to the chase...

Taylor Swift has a new song out.
Why would anyone care?  You might ask. Good question. After feeling strong dislike towards most of Taylor's 'Red' album, and downright hatred for 'Shake It Off', why the hell am I still listening to the girl? Argh, old habits die hard, I guess. Back in 2009, I was completely obsessed with the 'Fearless' album, and even more so with 'Speak Now' the following year. I didn't care how people wrinkled their noses and frowned when I told them that she was my guilty pleasure - completely on the other side of the spectrum to the rest of my favourites: The Killers, Springsteen, Coldplay. I guess that my inherent sarcasm and cynicism makes some forget that deep down I am still a young female human being who wants to float down staircases in sparkly dresses, whilst singing 'Sparks Fly', dammit!

Anyway. Taylor's new song 'Out of the Woods' is absolutely nothing like her early country music ('Tim McGraw', 'Tied Together With A Smile', 'Our Song'), but it's also a slight departure from the pop atrocity that is 'Shake It Off'. Perhaps she's found herself. Perhaps her cat had a good, long sit-down with her and explained that twerking is just not okay. Whatever happened, she's come out with this song  that's got a bit more of an electro-pop-rock feel to it.

Here are a few things I learned from the new song:

- Taylor is obsessed with the month of December. At least the snow mobile crash wasn't at 2am.

- She's got a little bit of a dark side - just listen to the way she sings about the hospital trip. Mwahahaha.

- She's still experimenting with different styles of music...

- ... but she's stuck with her tried and tested my-relationship-failed lyrics.

- She's still got it. Hell yes, she does.

The Kooks Live in Cape Town - #5GumExperience

It’s an interesting thing chewing gum brand 5 Gum does a few times a year: get everyone squealing over a musical act, make tickets available only through a competition, then announce the winners at the last minute and pack the lucky few thousand people into five buses headed for a secret location. Throw in an extremely successful social media campaign, and you might just have the winning formula.

Bitter though I may still be about the Two Door Cinema Curse (don't get me started on this one), I was quite impressed to have won myself tickets to see The Kooks. Did I even know who they were though? Uh... OK, quick check-up on my music library and I was pleasantly surprised to find an entire album on their's. OH, these guys, of course. Sorry, Luke and company. Much fanfare later, plus a constant rotation of The Kooks setlist on repeat all day every frikking day for about a month, I was prepared. 

Let's hit it. 

So off we pop to the 'secret meeting point' ie Maitland Secondary School - all the while acutely aware of how easily some creepy axe-man could get all of us in one go - and board the buses (*shudder*) to the 'secret location' ie Salt River Studios. It's a warehouse - totally called that ages ago.  

The trickle of hipsters becomes a flood by the time we get inside, how many people won tickets anyway?! Now, I must clarify my use of the word 'hipsters' here: they weren't jocks. No one looked like they'd stumbled in here on the way back from a surf or Tiger Tiger. These were the kind of people who were on social media often enough to know about the gig, and that could be bothered to enter. If there were any jock-types here, they'd clearly been dragged along as a plus one to a out-of-place friend. 

Anyway, ain't nobody got time for three opening acts, so we decide to chill in the food court for a bit, only to be constantly enticed by the smell of artery-clogging fried potatoes on a stick. By 10.30pm though, it was time to go and find ourselves a spot in the crowd for the main act. I am so unaccustomed to being anyway but holding onto a barrier for dear life, and being so far back was definitely a change. 

In all honesty, I was surprised at the amount of enthusiasm for a band such as The Kooks. Brits who had never toured SA before managed to pack out a venue as large as this, whilst still leaving those unlucky enough not to have won tickets feeling upset. Perhaps music is not doomed after all.

And they sure proved they were worth all the hype! Opening with the ridiculously catchy “Ooh La”, they sped through a catalogue of their hits, from first single “Eddie’s Gun” to the extremely popular “She Moves In Her Own Way”, they got the already excitable crowd jumping and bopping and singing happily along to every word. For a band without much significant so called commercial success, they sure do have fans. Although crowd interaction was minimal – hey, they didn’t fly all the way over here for a chat – when curly-haired frontman Luke Pritchard did engage with his adoring audience, no one cared that his accent was so strong that the only word we managed to understand was “OK.”

In a performance that was so pitch-perfect that it could have been a CD, The Kooks outdid any expectations that I had. Highlights of their set were most definitely the acoustic version of the sweet ‘Seaside’, the audience going crazy during ‘She Moves In Her Own Way’ and the massive singalong during encore song ‘Shine On’.

Ending off with The Kooks classic ‘Naïve’, Pritchard thanked the crowd enthusiastically for coming out to support them. The South African fans had clearly made an impact.

After such a fantastic event, the only thing on anyone’s mind was getting back to the parking lot with haste, but a disaster surfaced in the form of the buses back. Absolutely no queuing system was enforced, leaving some of us to wait for over an hour for a bus, whilst others took only minutes. and small riots nearly broke out with people fighting so hard to get on to the buses, that things got very dangerous. I would not have been surprised if someone had been run over by a bus, or managed to topple one of the buses over. I don’t appreciate being made to feel like I'm a contestant in The Hunger Games whilst waiting for a bus.

Transport issues aside, it was a well organized event, and a brilliant band. I look forward to the next #5GumExperience.

BattleBorn Ready!

No band is perfect, but The Killers come pretty close. That said, there is at least one song from each of their albums that I honestly don’t like. On Hot Fuss, it’s ‘Believe Me Natalie’, on Sam’s Town, it’s ‘My List’, on Day & Age, it’s ‘Goodnight, Travel Well’. What? Stop judging me. I bet there are tonnes of people out there who don’t like ‘A Dustland Fairytale.” No, wait, bad example.  Really bad example.

Anyway, BattleBorn isn’t exactly out yet, but I’m a terrible fan and I listened to it already. What? The fools wanted to put previews on their website and let iTunes stream the whole thing. It’s not my fault I’m not in the USA or Canada and couldn’t listen to the official iTunes stream. Anyway, I’ve listened to the album – YOLO, right? (Sorry for calling you ‘fools’, my babies, I didn’t mean it, I love you all kthanksbye).

I had some mixed feelings after listening to the short clips on the website. After hearing Miss Atomic Bomb live twice, I had expected it to be my favorite track on the album, but I was sorely disappointed with the studio version in the clip. Meh. Nothing can ever beat a live verison. The next disappointment was ‘The Rising Tide’. I didn’t expect it to be amazing, but the backing track is purely grating… it’s almost as bad as Princess of China. I realized it was going to be far too difficult to pass judgement on the album without hearing the songs in full.

Roll on the next day and… (I’m not reviewing track-by-track, these are just the ones I have an opinion on so far, I’ve only listened to the full album about three times, and I can’t even tell some of the tack apart yet, that will come.)

Goodness. Freaking. Gracious. Miss Atomic Bomb is suddenly up there with River and Dustland as one of my favourites! It’s amazing how much better it sounds when I’m hearing the full version instead of a 20 second clip. Basically, I want to put this song on repeat and listen to it for the rest of my life. “Racing shadows in the moonlight, through the desert on a hot night, and for a second there we’d won, yeah we were innocent and young.’ Oh that line destroys me! I’m in danger of becoming an incoherent mess on the floor everytime I hear it. Can I get it tattooed on me? Can I get it engraved into my brain? Painted on my wall (ooh, there’s an idea)? Can I name my mother’s newest adopted stray cat Miss Atomic Bomb?

Wait, what do you mean there are other tracks on the album? Oh. Okay then. I’ll move on if I must.

I stick by what I said about Flesh and Bone after seeing it live: it’s like something out of a horror movie, and that’s a good thing! That creepy intro, the almost-menacing shouts of “flesh and bo-one”… I’m assaulted by images of car chases, street fighters and general violence. It’s brilliant. Please, Killers, continue to assault my senses. I will not complain.

Runaways – storming, epic, a better set-opener than Human could ever wish to be.  Oh Brandon, if you must run away, can I come with?

A Matter of Time is another matter of pure perfection. I swear I hear some ‘50s/’60s influences… Brandon croons about Charleston Avenue and vacant starlight motels like he’s Danny Williams or something – that line wouldn’t be out of place in any song from that era, and yet it’s such an upbeat song that it might even make it onto the radio one day.

The Rising Tide is slightly better in full version than the clip. Thank goodness that horrible grating synth only kicks in during the chorus. I wish there was a bit more of a kick during the first verse: some extra drum and guitar bits when Brandon’s vocals pause, but I do like the lyrics. Everytime Brandon starts going on about neon lights I can’t help but giggle. So for that reason, I’ll stop hating on this poor song.

Deadlines and Commitments, however, is another story altogether. Oh, just make it go away! Can I scratch it off of my disc, when I get the CD? I know, I’m being melodramatic, it’s not that bad, and I’ll probably love it by tomorrow, but for now, it really gets on my damn nerves. So-so lyrics that sound like they’d fit in with a really bad 80’s comedy-drama about stressed people in an office.  Just my opinion. There’s that song that I don’t like, I told you there was one on every album.

From Here On Out makes my soul so unbelievably happy. Yes, The Killers are cowboys at heart! Go on then, boys, grab those hats, mount your horses and gallop off into the setting desert sun. Grab Johnny Cash while you’re on your way (I know he’s dead, I am just joking), because he’d fit this song perfectly. Yes! County! How often is it that a stadium rock band (as missy Lauren says, a commercial band) makes a country song – and makes it well? Not very often. Let’s just say that if The Killers brought out a country album, they’d become the darlings of the genre faster than Kanye West can say “Imma let you finish”.

Be Still is lovely, quiet, calm, unexpected and beautiful. This is the part of the album where the band makes all of the people with hearts cry their little eyes out before….

BattleBorn bludgeons us into submission (yeah, I stole that line from a review of the Leeds show, it’s appropriately descriptive). What a way to end an album! I’m reeling as though I’ve just been to a concert! What an epic song. It builds slowly and then attacks the listener in a crescendo of crashing drums, guitars and vocals. It’s perfect. Yes, they’ve channeled their inner-Springsteen, but I swear they could teach The Boss a thing or two.

It’s an album of power-rock, if that’s even a genre. And if it wasn’t, The Killers have just invented it. They are flawless in vocals and instruments. Mark, Dave and Ronnie’s instruments build on each other, to be overlayed by the most distinctive voice in rock… and Brandon’s vocals are utterly impeccable.

[Edit: after 24 hours:I should really calm down, listening to one album ten times in 24 hours is probably not entirely healthy, but I’m completely addicted!] Basically, no one can ever tell me that The Killers aren’t the best band in the world, because they’ve just gone and proved that they are. In a world where even Coldplay had to become more mainstream in order to sell records, these four Nevada natives put a country song on a rock album. Enough said. The Killers win at life.