Taking Back Sunday + Blitz Kids + Marmozets @ The Institute, 11th December 2014
Taking Back Sunday hit The Institute tonight in support of their most recent, 6th LP, Happiness Is. Despite their first two albums, Tell All Your Friends and Where You Want To Be, still being their two biggest and best known albums, their music work since then has been consistently strong. They have almost a cult status within emo music and rock music in general. So much so that they’re still packing out venues across the world. Tonight seems to be no exception, with the room already pretty much full to witness Marmozets and Blitz Kids, two bands making waves in music, particularly the very exciting Marmozets.
There is a real buzz around Marmozets at the moment, their debut album ‘The Weird And Wonderful Marmozets’ has cemented their place as a band to watch at the moment. Having previously seen them put on one helluva set at Download earlier in the year, I was very much looking forward to seeing them again tonight. They didn’t let me down, the band put on a rip-roaring set filled with energy, talent and downright heaviness. Front-woman Becca Macintyre was particularly impressive throughout, making the stage hers right from the off, and making sure the crowds attention never wavered throughout the set. Their sound has been described as poppy but heavy, and while in the most part I would agree with this, there is so much more to this band that it is hard to force them into one genre. The set is filled with really nice guitar work, with guitarists Sam Macintyre and Jack Bottomly both willing to step and show us what they can do, rather than one just sitting back and playing rhythm. Ones to watch, for sure.
Up next were Blitz Kids, another young British band who started roughly around the same time as Marmozets though their careers have taken massively different paths. While there was time a few years ago when Blitz Kids threatened to make it big, it never seemed to materialise. Though on the back of tonight’s performance it is obvious to see why they didn’t reach their potential. They were flat throughout the set, while there were attempts throughout by frontman Joe James to get the crowd going, these attempts seemed to fail. There is little to show me why Taking back Sunday picked these to be their main support, unless perhaps it was just a bad night. They seemed to be going through the motions, Joe seemed to want all the attention by, without fail, doing a solo vocal part in every song, which became tiresome very quickly, especially considering his voice sounded poor and often out of key. The rest of the band also did nothing to explain the choice, with generic drumming fills and incedredibly quiet guitars.
While other bands who had been given the Emo tag early on in their career, Brand New for example, have spent their careers trying to shake it. Taking Back Sunday have embraced it, they’re a band all too happy to accept their early albums, particularly debut ‘Tell All Your Friends’ which will always be their most popular and is what a lot of people want to hear when they see them live. So I imagine picking a set list for Taking Back Sunday is always a chore, how to keep the people happy who want to see the early stuff that they spent their teenage years playing non-stop and also how to push their own agenda, of showing off their recent stuff that they have put all their energy into over recent years. It’s a task that I do not envy, yet the band seem to pull with off with aplomb, the setlist tonight is a perfect testament to the bands career.
Kicking off with the instantly recognisable riff off ‘What It Feels Like To Be A Ghost’, lead singer Adam is already showing off the personality which makes him such a great performer, filled with charisma and a certain flamboyance which is hard not enjoy. He twists and writhes about the stage swinging his mic about the place with a confidence which borders on arrogance but is nontheless entertaining. The band returned to their original line-up almost four years ago now, before their Self Titled album was released, and it shows. While their isn’t much communication between themselves they’re obviously a tight-knit bunch as they sound unbelievably tight. The music is note perfect and yet again the sound in The Institute is absolutely spot on.
While the band does an impressive job throughout at keeping the crowd happy with their song choices, they’re primarily here to promote their most recent album ‘Happiness Is’. They litter their set with the stronger songs off an album which is solid throughout. ‘Flicker, Fade’ which sounds like a familiar TBS song until it heads into the soaring, singalong chorus which sounds absolutely fantastic and ‘Stood A Chance’ which is easily one of the most upbeat songs of their career thus far, despite the dark subject matter. Both songs produce some of the biggest singalongs of the night which was pleasantly surprising.
Now, I usually write notes about each band throughout their sets, yet for Taking Back Sunday I only wrote the name of one song. ‘Better Homes And Gardens’ a song which is introduced by Adam as the hardest song of his life to write, focusing on his divorce with his wife. The reason I felt the need to note it down as it was delivered with such unrivalled passion that it had to be mentioned. the overwhelming meaning of the song meant his voice occasionally faltered yet this only seemed to add to the performance.
The band also delivers the hits that the audience is itching to hear tonight, ‘Liar (It Takes One To Know One’, ‘ You Know How I Do’, ‘One Eighty By Summer’ and personal favourite ‘My Blue Heaven’ which sounds magnificent. They decide not to do an encore and just play through, which seems an inspired move as the crowd is already at peak excitement by now so the whole encore charade seemed a bit pointless. They end with arguably their biggest two songs ‘Cute Without The E ( Cut From The Team)’ & ‘Makedamnsure’ both are sung in unison with the crowd the whole way through.
There is no doubt my opinion is massively biased, but Taking Back Sunday were on top form tonight, endlessly entertaining, charismatic and no doubt talented, with an ever growing list of top notch songs to choose from. Taking Back Sunday are a band that are far more than just “Tell All Your Friends.”
Reviewer: Francis Sebestjanowicz
Photographer : John Dent
TBS are always a pleasure to watch live, I caught them at Riot Fest and nearly lost my voice singing along to every song! Nice review Francis 🙂