Patrick Wolf / Living Things / Plasticines – Granada – 6/30/09
Posted July 9th, 2009 · Artists: Living Things, Patrick Wolf, Plasticines
The Nylon Records showcase/tour was hitting up the Granada with a slew of bands the other night so we stopped by to check out what the fuss was about. I missed the first opener, Jaguar Love, though some of their members made appearances during Patrick Wolf’s set and they looked very….costumed. Anyway, the 3 bands I did see all had something different about them but the one thing they all had in common was that they brought insane energy to the stage for a very sparsely populated Granada and I’m not sure you could get a better stage energy for a small crowd than we had here.
First up upon my arrival was the Plasticines who were a girl rock group from Paris. They had some well orchestrated moves on the floor, most of which involved rock star posing of some sort. They also took to calling out some various members of the crowd (including DC9′s representative) for not clapping/dancing, which was amusing to me because I was not called out, though I’m not sure how I would have reacted had I been. They had some garage-y girl rock going on with a bit more focus on the hooks and the melodies than just being punk, so it was some pretty good rocking stuff generally. They also managed to get the limited crowd contingent into it for the most part fairly well, to where by the end the crowd was actually giving them some pretty good props. I do have to say for the small crowd these girls brought maximum effort to the stage and really brought a full level show to a small amount of people. There was no mailing it in or scaling it back at all, and that was pretty awesome. I really enjoyed their set and they had some really cool rock songs to work with.
After the Plasticines had finished up The Living Things hit the stage, also with some garage-y blues-y rock songs and also an incredible amount of effort. These guys were really into it and playing some really good stuff and by the end the crowd was with them. You also had some craziness like the lead singer coming out with a giant Colonial American flag and draping it over himself for one song after proclaiming the greatness that America is (hells yes baby). There was also much rock star posing and strutting about during their set, though it ended on a bit of a strange note as it seemed that one of the drum mics busted and they just kicked over the drum set and the set was over. Anyway, despite that they once again acted like they were playing to 100,000 people even though it was probably more like 50. You gotta love that they were so into it.
Finally the headliner, Patrick Wolf, came up. I was slightly familiar with his most recent album “The Magic Position” but hadn’t really heard the whole thing, and was kind of going in with a blank slate for this one. I had also heard all the David Bowie comparisons and I can certainly easily see where that comes from as Bowie’s influence is heavily seen in most things going on on stage, but he certainly has a lot more to him than just a copycat for Bowie, and he brought probably even more energy than the first two acts did, if that is even possible. He had on quite a bizarre outfit the whole way and he switched instruments multiple times, from the guitar to the keyboards to a violin to a ukelele. I’m surprised he didn’t jump on drums for one song.
The guy is clearly mega-talented musically, and his band backed him up very well too. He hit through epic song after epic song each one with more ambition and grandiosity than the last one. It was really pretty impressive because he really is trying to go big or go home on every song, and the instrumentation and the whole production just goes that way on each song. He was on his game and really gave it all for the audience, great stuff. I would certainly recommend checking him out when he swings back around to the US the next time.
