Best of 2014 - Live Act
5) Royal Blood - The Academy
The group manage to find an extra gear on Loose Change, with an extra wallop of distortion on the bass upping the ante before the duo launch into a raucous version of Out Of The Black. Here there’s no holding back, the song is played at a furious pace and the performance is mind-blowing. Thatcher races out from behind the kit and launches himself into the crowd at what appears to be the song’s end, but he clambers back onstage and behind the kit for one last hard-hitting outro. Royal Blood are a seriously good live act, with a set of songs that are perfect for the live stage. The small faults in their performance will probably be ironed out with experience, and they’re likely to be an even better band by the time they return to Dublin next year. The hype is justified.
4) Lucius - The Workman's Club
They finish their set with the visually/aurally/soulfully arresting Genevieve before disappearing and returning, treading into the crowd to perform an acoustic Two of Us on the Run. Without the distortion of amplification we get a wildly satisfying opportunity to hear just how well the five-piece harmonies gel and it – alongside the closing cover of the Paul McCartney-penned Goodbye – is the perfect way to the end the gig. Everything about the set works; the music, the look, the tone. It’s an unabashed musical optimism performed with real passion and good humour. Lucius are a great musical act and put on a consistently brilliant, good mood-inducing live show.
3) Queens of the Stone age - Belsonic
For Fairweather Friend, Josh Homme just couldn’t help but notice a Custom House Square resident’s dog watching him from the balcony of the adjacent flats. So the song was duly dedicated to the dog, who fled back inside. But Homme was watching and later on he wouldn’t start Go With The Flow until the dog returned. Would the king charles pooch make a return? Inevitably it did and got a large cheer as it was raised aloft to the crowd. In between that Feel Good Hit Of The Summer, The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret and Do It Again are rattled out, keeping the pace frantic.
The swaggering Make It Wit Chu was the first song into the encore, but a QOTSA set should only end one way and that is in a thunderous climax. Cue Song For The Dead with its pounding, growling intro. It’s a rousing conclusion to what was a near perfect QOTSA set list.
2) St. Vincent
This isn’t just a concert, it’s a marathon, a creative force, a rehearsed art-show, a striking visual experience, a glittering musical endeavour. From the lofty highs to the spacious lows, the movement-driven sections to the oozing of sex appeal, and the command showcased in her guitar playing, it’s a show that you can’t stop thinking about and a shining light in what must be the most exciting and individual creative new star to blaze her way onto the weary current musical landscape.
We just want to know where and when can we see St. Vincent again.
1) Arcade Fire - Marlay Park
The sky has darkened and oblivious jet-liners drift overhead as Arcade Fire destroys Marlay Park with a four-song encore; the funky and powerful Afterlife; the anthemic Neighbourhood #3 (Power Out); the kinetic Here Comes The Night Time (featuring the most enjoyable confetti explosion of all time when the song cranks back up again); and that aforementioned Godzilla-like space-punching lung-squeezing piece of epic songwriting that is Wake Up. That song feels like that because you know and everybody knows what’s going to happen once it’s played.
It’s like the explosion after the launch of a firework, the tsunami after a devastating earthquake, the black hole once the solar system’s sun has finished devouring planets. There’s nowhere for the gig to go but there, and as the park slowly empties the wordless chorus is sung by the crowd, who have just witnessed – as concert-goers in years past have experienced with bands like The Who and Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band – one of the greatest live bands in history performing at their absolute creative peak.