I’m not the biggest Muse fan (only owning Absolution), but I’ve heard they do a good live show, so when they came through Houston last summer I was going to go and give them the benefit. However, I then found out that they were supporting U2 and I’d rather have my ears piped with fresh dogturd than sit through a U2 gig, so I didn’t go. I guess I could have just left after Muse, but TicketMaster wouldn’t agree to my stipulation that none of my ticket price would go to U2 if I didn’t stay for their set, so that was that.
Ironically, when they came through town again (today) it was actually their support band, Silversun Pickups that cropped up on my radar. I’ve been obsessing over Silversun Pickups since I heard their first full-length, Carnavas a couple of years ago, and I was already on my way online to order a ticket even before I found out that they were supporting Muse (although for my money it should have been the other way round…). So the fact that I would fit in a Muse gig for the same ticket price was a bonus.
Muse being a big Stadium band, this was at the Toyota Arena (which doubles as a basketball court and ice hockey rink on other days – though presumably not at the same time). Muse being a big Stadium band also presumably explains why they can get away with charging $32 for a tour T-shirt ($45 for the ‘baseball’ tee). Which is just outrageous for what is basically a free advertisement for them, so I decided to save my money for the bar. “Can I get a Red Bull please?” “No.” I don’t know if they didn’t sell it, or he just didn’t like the look of me…
The last couple of big gigs I’ve been to I managed to miss the support band, so this time I made a concerted effort to get there by the posted 7pm (especially as it was the support band I really wanted to see). In fact I even arrived 20 minutes early, so I had the time to survey the crowd with withering contempt (all students with wild hair and women wearing clothes they must have borrowed from their daughters – no doubt much to their daughter’s disgust which is why they didn’t accompany them…) while I waited.
At 7pm exactly Silversun Pickups fired up the show with There’s No Secret This Year, from which point they never let up with the cheesegrater guitar and high-register vocals like a (Fire Theft era) Jeremy Enigk. I don’t know how Brian Aubert keeps it up, ’cause for a band sometimes (unfairly) categorized as Shoegazing, they’re certainly no slouches, with 100% effort and obvious enthusiasm . Despite the guitar noise serving as a siren-call to the masses, people continued to drift in and out throughout their set, going to the bar, or to stock up on personal-size pizzas (why?? it’s a 2-hour gig; can you not go without food for that long???). I kinda wanted to tell people to just sit the fuck down because they were missing something exceptional. Which they were.
I’d wondered how the emotive vocals and would pan out in an enormodome, because to me their albums sound best on some high-quality headphones with your eyes closed. But it actually came across pretty well, although I think they’d benefit from a ‘more intimate’ setting – Peter, if they ever play Ancienne Belgique, that’s the place to see them. As it was, the show was pretty powerful; it’s very much Aubert’s show with the squalling guitar well to the front, but the drumming is rock solid (the drummer lifting his sticks above his head for just about every hit), the bass satisfying, and the keyboards add some good color to the overall sound. But you’re still brought back to the guitar. The guitar. I just couldn’t take my focus off it; a real driving, positive sound, like MBV with energy, which certainly made up for what I lost in the vocals through sitting so far back.
I was disappointed at getting a ticket in the seating section at the back, and wished I’d gone for General Admission in front of the stage and just put up with the inevitable backache (it’s an age thing). I was so far back that I didn’t realize the bass-player was female until she added some sweet backing vocals to Panic Switch late in the set. (Female bass players are almost as hot as female drummers.) Still, I could just about make out Aubert’s happy little leg moves, and see Nikki’s bassline bounce-along which at least made it look as though they were enjoying themselves as much as I was.
Unusually for a support band, Silversun Pickups did a good job of hyping up the headliners rather than trying to blow them away, even getting the crowd to shout out “Muuuuse!” during their set. (No, really. I’m not being ironic and like “They were still booing the support act when we came on”.) Bands used to object to being photographed, but with cameraphones it’s impossible to enforce. Silversun Pickups apparently decided that if you can’t beat them join them, and positively embraced this, pitting the left and right sides of the arena against each other in a battle of camera flashes, creating a lo-fi lightshow that launched them into apparent closer, and ‘big hit single’, Panic Switch.
But this turned out not to be the closer, as Silversun Pickups segued into the superlative Lazy Eye to close. Admittedly this was the standout track on their debut album, but it’s a measure of the pervasiveness and influence of video games that Lazy Eye, featured on Rock Band 2 (I can 100% it on Medium…) garnered the biggest cheers and loudest audience singalongs. And with the song’s extended guitar coda dissolving into squalls of feedback, Silversun Pickup’s time was up. No Chequered Floor, no Dream at Tempo 119 or Little Lover’s So Polite, but I guess if the headliners only give you 45 minutes you can’t do everything (equally great though it all is).
Oh, and Muse were alright, too…
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