Miike Snow, Canon Blue
Granada Theater
June 7, 2010
Better than: Seeing Neil Young at the Meyerson. Just sayin'.
Before they left the stage last night at the Granada Theater, openers Canon Blue ensured the capacity crowd that they would be "in for a real treat visually and aurally."
This ended up being quite the understatement.
In hindsight, a cautionary phrase like, "Warning: Miike Snow may cause seizures" may have been more appropriate.
In all seriousness: Last night, Miike Snow launched as brutal a visual assault as this town has ever seen.
Out from swirling clouds of fog and mesmerizing beams of dazzling purple
light, the three members that make up Miike Snow appeared on stage
accompanied by another trio of touring musicians, all dressed in black
outfits and mysterious white masks.
After a few songs, the
masks were ditched--but the band's propulsive beats and illuminated attack
were unrelenting. Even their most familiar songs--like crowd favorite
"Black and Blue"--were given the luxury of extended intros and
instrumental outro sections, perfectly synched with blinding white
strobes.
The fact that Miike Snow is the name of a band and not a specific person
is one that many people seem to find more than a little bit baffling.
Furthering the confusion, frontman Andrew Wyatt was the only member of
the band consistently visible, while his bandmates Christian Karlsson
and Pontus Winnberg and a trio of additional musicians were content to
remain mysterious figures in the shadows, twisting knobs, chunking on
keyboards, pounding a drum set, and playing bass in relative
obscurity behind clouds of smoke and piercing searchlights.
As more and more electronic-based acts are comfortable bringing laptops
onstage and relying on loads of prerecorded backing tracks, it was
obvious that Miike Snow felt compelled to perform their set live, and to put a
heavy emphases on a compelling live show.
The addition of a live
drummer added a more open, bombastic feel than one gets when listening
to the album. At no time was this more apparent than in the extended outro
to "Animal," the group's most well-known single. The band clicked on all
cylinders as perfectly synched strobes and drums throbbed away, growing
faster and faster, whipping the sweaty crowd into a frenzy of furious
head-bobbing and frenetic swaying.
By the time the song finished, the
crowd's screams of approval were utterly deafening.
Critic's Notebook
Random Note: The Granada has been posting their @granadatheater tweets
up on their giant screens in between acts. You can tell a lot about a
show by reading the live tweets by people in the crowd. For example: At
last week's of Montreal show, all the comments were extremely vulgar and
sexual; last night, the screen featured mostly puns about making it "snow" in the
theater.
By The Way: I absolutely applaud the Granada's decision to put out
several pitchers of ice water and stacks of cups for people to help
themselves to on the way out the door. It was especially refreshing
after the sweaty dance-filled show. Utterly brilliant idea.
