Review of Odd Future Wolfgang Kill Them All at The Academy

Review by Kevin Donnellan
Photos by Sean Conroy

You would have to feel for the security men at the Academy, Tuesday evening gigs aren’t meant to be like this. Standing out on the street afterwards people proudly compare war wounds, “I crowd surfed”, “I was at the bottom of a pile of people”, “Tyler kicked me in the face”. Rap has got a whole lot moshier with the emergence of OFWGKTA.

Enough about the moshing and the stage diving (for the moment) how did it actually sound? Good, but not great is the Eamon Dunphy-esque answer (there’s a combination; Eamon Dunphy and Odd Future). It’s the sound system’s fault but the instantly recognisable beats of the likes of Yonkers and French didn’t quite explode out like they could have. Syd Tha Kid combines being probably the coolest woman in the world with also being one of the best Hip Hop DJs you could hope to see, kicking things off at just the right time, occasionally putting on the brakes unexpectedly to mess with
us.

Vocal-wise a regular hip hop problem of too many cooks raised its head; lyrics getting drowned out and losing impact as multiple voices shout them over each-other. Some of the best moments come when there’s just one vocalist, with Hodgy Beats coming closest to a machine gun delivery (if you’re looking for rat-a-tat-tat rapping these guys aren’t for you).

Four paragraphs in and we still haven’t got to Tyler, The Creator (always hard saying the name out loud and trying to include a pause for the comma). Well he’s as watchable in the flesh as he is on YouTube. All the ticks are there: the over-the-top giggling, the eye-rolling, the contortionist-like arm jerks. You could be stone deaf and still be happy to watch his movements in silence for the evening.

Music and stage presence aside there’s another reason why the Academy is sold out, that rumour of danger, the clips of Tyler et al stage diving, the reports from SXSW, Primavera, Oxegen, everywhere, that makes Odd Future sound like a Punk act. We’re not disappointed, a world premiere (we’re told) of a throwaway rhyme about their friend Taco gives security their first major headache of the night as Hodgy throws himself into our care with abandon. The crowd responds in kind, you wouldn’t see this at most metal gigs; the crowd heaving, stumbling, pushing, punching, sometimes falling. An audience member is invited up on stage to stage dive, he’s not really in a position to refuse. Maybe the music is becoming secondary to the novelty, but when it’s this much fun it hardly seems to matter.

The band give their money’s worth too; with 90-plus minutes of this mayhem. So a good gig made more memorable by the moshing and stage diving. After Tuesday’s gig the jury is still out on the staying power of this particular phenomenon, will they be still entertaining 15 years down the line like Wu Tang were in Tripod back in July? impossible to call for sure at this stage, if they put on as much weight as Wu Tang the stage diving will probably be curtailed at least…