Stereolab w/ Bachelorette

Wednesday, January 28, 2009

The Kings Arms, Auckland

Hit and miss! If you’re a fan of Stereolab you’re not going to have wanted to miss this gig, but if you only like a few of their songs and dislike others you’re probably thinking it was a bit of a let down. After all, Stereolab didn’t really do anything special; they got up on stage, played their songs in a pretty uninteresting manner, with little to no crowd interaction and that was it. A friend I spoke to after the show who describes himself as a Stereolab fan, said something along the lines of “I liked about five or six songs and the rest of the time I was saying hurry up move on to the next song”. That said, Stereolab did play a good mix of faster and slower songs, I just preferred the faster, more psychedelic songs to the slower casual indie pop numbers. There were times when the songs seemed all to simple and really failed to engage the audience. A few of the band members seemed new to scene and looked to still be learning the songs on stage. It was probably one of the more disappointing international sets recently, but we have been pretty blessed lately.

Bachelorette’s  opening set was once again a huge let-down. I was very impressed when I first saw her play a few years ago, but she slowly gets worse with every show. It now seems destined that every time she plays a show in Auckland some sort of equipment will fail. She always seem to let it effect her performance and she never seems comfortable on stage anymore. It was somewhat of a morbid performance with her frowning and constantly dwelling on the fact that her lap-top had broken. I don’t think anyone felt like dancing.

More Stereolab live photos

 

Posted by Nick Fulton under U.S.A
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