Manchester Orchestra @ The ICA

Manchester Orchestra at ICA Review

4/5
Bands: Manchester Orchestra
Venue: ICA
Gig: Manchester Orchestra
Gig date: 21st July 2009
Posted on 10th August 2009 by johnbeyer

It’s almost impossible to both move and breathe during Kevin Devine’s support slot. It’s extremely crowded and also very quiet, and the audience hang on every word he says and sings. Full of stories, his stage banter and songs are interesting and intelligent, and his command of the guitar is immense – one minute a hungry, savage, reckless beast, the next a tamed, tempered household pet. On stage, in a dark room, Devine seems both confident and insecure – glad to be here, but also unsure of why everyone present is so keen to hear what he has to say. Partly, it’s because Manchester Orchestra’s Andy Hull makes a few surprise appearances throughout his set, but that’s selling Devine’s performance short – it’s a brilliant, captivating and occasionally breathtaking set from an artist who deserves commercial success equal to the critical acclaim that’s already been heaped upon him. Manchester Orchestra are not to be outdone, however. They start with an amusing anecdotal song about 50 Cent (“I want to be 50 Cent regardless of his Vitamin Water campaign ads”), which seems out of character for a band whose songs, and previous performances, have been so solemn, but the humour here is injected into their set throughout the night, both in the between song banter and in some of the songs themselves. That said, the songs are fiendishly good – all delivered with a rare heart and soul that contains an immense degree of power. Balanced between the light and the dark and the loud and the quiet, Manchester Orchestra’s set is full of both a fiery rage – ‘Shake It Out’ is phenomenal and unnerving, ‘Wolves At Night’ intense and jittery – and a comforting calmness – an almost dreamy reworking of ‘The Only One’, stripped back and slowed down to dust and bones, and a gorgeous, lilting start to ‘I Can Barely Breathe’ before it bursts, shakes and shudders into its explosive crescendo. It’s a fiercely intense performance from the band, and one made all the more so by Andy Hull’s solo medley at the end, that takes in Pedro The Lion, The Mountain Goats and Willie Nelson for a truly heart-stopping, breathtaking end to the show. There’s no encore, either – just Hull’s distinctive voice left to ring out in the dead darkness as the crowd try to - somehow - piece their lives together again after they were torn apart and decimated in the preceding hour and a half. Humphrey Park http://www.the-fly.co.uk/words/reviews/live-reviews/5536/manchester-orch...

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