Russian Circles @ The Bakery,Perth (17/09/11)

Mon 26th Sep, 2011 in Gig Reviews

As the word spread like wildfire about the Chicagan band Russian Circles coming to town in the later part of last week, tickets were snapped up quick. With hype like that, it was no wonder that The Bakery felt extremely claustrophobic for most of the night with people opting to spend the night outside in the rain rather than fight for a place to stand inside. Drowning Horse and Tangled Thoughts of Leaving kicked off proceedings, pulling the punters in early on.

Eleventh He Reaches London are the best thing about Perth. For years, they have managed to build a thriving fanbase in their hometown thanks to amazing live shows and the stellar Good Fight For Harmony and Hollow Be My Name albums. Unfortunately, this wasn’t their night. Soundwise they sounded lacklustre, tired even. As if they had done it all before way too many times. Considering their last show was six months ago, the fans expected something more. Gone from the set were favourites Swarming and Say You See Why So, perhaps playing these would’ve won the crowd over in the end.

Whilst some may argue that Russian Circles also felt like they were just going through the paces, others will counteract that by saying that it was an epic set full of post-rock eargasms. Russian Circles have a knack for being able to build sonic landscapes and tear them down in a blistering set of instrumental rock. They have built their reputation worldwide on their live shows alone, playing alongside Mono (who are coming out here next month), Tool, Pelican and Coheed & Cambria in the past. Their onstage chemistry left a lot to be desired, with band members Mike Sullivan, Brian Cook and Dave Turncrantz not interacting at all during their hour long set, they stunned those lucky enough to be up front as evident in the cheering inbetween and during the songs.

Guitarist, Sullivan spent more time looking at his pedals than he did the crowd and it was almost like they were playing in a cage or behind a glass window with no crowd interaction either. Instrumental shows feel a lot like jam sessions most of the time. It doesn’t matter what songs they play as long as they sound good and usually its hard to decipher which songs from which albums they are playing unless you know the band extremely well. While they have three albums in Enter, Station and Geneva to work from with a fourth, Empros, on the way next month they spent most of their time flirting between the new album and Geneva. However, Russian Circles were able to replicate and expand upon their tracks through the use of Sullivan’s and Cook’s extensive array of effects and loop pedals. This helped build the monstrous sound up and around the four walls of The Bakery.

Mixed emotions at gigs are not a rare thing. In fact, they’re as common as opinions. It’s what helps to build conversations and as a promoter, band, publicist, venue booker, venue manager, it’s these that have consumers coming back for more, or maybe not. Good, bad, average, expectations weren’t met, expectations were exceeded, whatever the individual felt, one thing was certain. They had just been rocked by a blissful set of post-rock angst thanks to Russian Circles and some of Perth’s best.