British India @ The GovernorHindmarsh, Adelaide (08/04/11)

Mon 11th Apr, 2011 in Gig Reviews

British India rolled in town for their March Into The Ocean tour supported by Adelaide’s the City Riot’s and Melbourne’s Boy In A Box. It’s almost become a routine where British India tour every three or four months or so and tonight it had become obvious that the interest has started to taper off a bit going from two sold out shows at The Gov to not filling one show even three quarters full.

First up was Boy In A Box (not to be confused with the reference to an unidentified murder victim commonly referred to as “America’s Unknown Child”) who I thought they were quite impressive and got the night off to a rollicking start. They have some solid singles in waiting with the likes of Moon Comes Up and Glitter, Gold, Ruin that will continue to impress. The highlight of their set was the cover of The Clash’s I Fought The Law featuring the lads from The City Riots.

The City Riots have had a sterling twelve months supporting the likes of The Smashing Pumpkins and touring overseas and all over Australia. It was good to see front man Ricky Kradolfer tried valiantly to fire up a lack lustre crowd who were more interested in sinking piss before the main act. The City Riots were tight, sounding great and probably was up there as one of their best considering I’ve seen them a number of times now. Set highlights included the superb She Never Wants To Dance, Burning Me Out__ and Favourite T-Shirt. The cover at the end featuring the guys from Boy In A Box was stellar covering Bruce Springsteen’s Dancing In The Dark. Great to see plenty of intensity and firepower from Ricky in this one as it really got the crowd going, finally!

British India strolled on around eleven and were up against the midnight curfew at The Gov. The crowd found plenty of voice to welcome their heroes. For me, I thought their overall performance fell well short of their best and seemed as if they were going through the motions. Maybe, to the lay person who had never seen them before will probably think I’m being harsh and would be thinking that this is the best thing they’ve ever seen.

The set list covered the back catalogue well plus a couple of new songs that Adelaide fans may not have heard of before as a pre-cursor to a new album to be released later this year. Opening with the new single March Into The Ocean the band was firing and continued the momentum with Safari. This Dance Is Loaded was solid followed by an oldie but a goldie Run The Red Light.

Probably the most frustrating thing during this show was the need for some punters to continue invade the stage assuming some personal relationship with the band and add to that the dickheads who had to crowd stuff proving annoying to the band as it seemed to create problems with the band’s gear. Seeing the bouncers walking across the stage during the set was terrible but they were up against it to stop these dicks.

This seemed to kill off some of energy and momentum of the show as the band did what they needed to finish the set. Teenage Mother and God Is Dead, Meet The Kids both got strong reactions and so did new tune She Prefers Older Men. Front man Declan Melia put the request out for some spliff to numb the blow of a five hour trip in the van to Mildura the next day – “ask and you shall receive.” Another highlight of their set was the infamous Offspring cover Self Esteem, which was “near and dear to me.”

Set staple Vanilla featured as the set drew to a close with I Said I’m Sorry and anti-climatic set closer Black And White Radio brought things to an abrupt end due to some poor form from some punters. The band didn’t return for an encore leaving with the thought no doubt that it’s only Adelaide.