Kasabian @ The HordernPavilion, Sydney (24/01/12)

Thu 26th Jan, 2012 in Gig Reviews

Experienced Brit-rockers Kasabian once again lit up Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion, with a brash extravaganza of rock and roll, helped by much esteemed support from London boys The Vaccines. Now having grown to the stellar heights of a Big Day Out third-billing, the lads pumped out a top-notch performance.

With a burgeoning crowd, The Vaccines took the stage with aplomb and launched straight into staples from their debut album – Blow It Up, the FIFA approved Wreckin’ Bar (Ra Ra Ra) and A Lack Of Understanding. Interspersed were some more recent efforts including single Tiger Blood and the even newer Teenage Icon.

Scruffy haired frontman Justin Young certainly has a unique stage presence and spent most of the set pacing from left to right, traversing the whole stage with a hunched back. Admittedly, his vocal ability was right on – delivering the short but sweet choruses of most of their material as well as mixing it up when needed, painstakingly drawing out every last remaining syllable in the word ‘ground’ during All In White. The band managed to blend most of their material together without the audience losing attention and generally proved themselves to be apt headliners of the venue in the future.

Before Kasabian took to the stage, the quite bizarre make-up of the crowd because more prominent. Surely at least 40% of it was made up of British ex-pats or backpackers. Boozing yobs were not impossible to find on the night and Leicester City football flags were prominent in the audience. More intriguing was that the crowd had aged considerably since I saw them touring the last album. This time it seemed every middle aged couple had accompanied their teenage kids to the mosh, with the over 50s age group well represented – perhaps as well as the group’s considerable mainstream appeal, the shift signifies the maturity in their sound which has grown from strength to strength upon their newest album.

This latest effort, Velociraptor!, dominated the evening with Days are Forgotten leading straight into the immense Shoot The Runner before the multi-instrumentalist Serge Pizzorno exclaimed that he was not the ‘lizard king’ Jim Morrison but instead the ‘Burger King’. It’s obvious that Pizzorno is the talent that drives the band, his guitar work always proving a dramatic and typically more likable counterpoint to lead singer Tom Meighan’s swaggering presence. Meighan’s banter with the crowd mostly consisted of ‘Sydney!’ or ‘Australia!’ in true rock stereotype form but interestingly enough, on the night the main pair played off one another to great effect with Meighan deriding Pizzorno as a ‘lanky beanstalk’. Meighan himself seemed more likeable than he has in the past, he was strong and confident throughout the set as expected of a band of the stature of Kasabian. He wasn’t overly arrogant, revelling in the genuine satisfaction that the crowd provided him throughout the gig such as Pizzorno’s attempts to turn the Hordern into ‘the biggest fucking mosh pit the world has ever seen’.

Underdog, complete with gong finale, was an early highlight. As was Pizzorno’s change to lead vocals for both Take Aim and later La Fée Verte which saw Meighan shift to a more subdued tambourine backing role. The contrast between earlier work on their debut and their later releases was epitomised by I.D. transitioning into the weaker I Hear Voices, with the crowd still having much love for seminal tracks such as Club Foot. Re-Wired though really seems to be Kasabian at their very best, fitting easily alongside any of their top tracks and easily readying the crowd for the grand Empire.

The most off the wall moment of the night occurred when a fan threw his band’s own CD recording onto the stage. Instead of reacting in disgust, Meighan read out its humble contents – consisting of pleads for the band’s approval. This was pretty tame until Serge decided to ‘read out’ another letter to the band asking for kinky sexual gratification, much to the glee of the crowd as the two central figures showed they were able to joke around without the pretentiousness of some of their earlier performances.

The main set was rounded off by the classic L.S.F. (Lost Souls Forever), with the ‘whoas’ continuing long into the encore call, this more than made up for the previous song – the slightly clichéd ballad Goodnight Kiss. The encore provided the best moments of the night, with Vlad The Impaler simply a blockbuster as Pizzorno delayed his refain of ‘get loose! get loose!’ until a late crescendo in which the crowd erupted in ecstasy, hanging off his every word. For the final song, Fire, the band decided to sit the crowd down – making the already packed venue just that little more squished – but it proved unforgettable as the whole crowd jumped up as one to round off the night. It topped off a varied and interesting setlist in which the band truely gave it their all, giving a lasting impression to most punters on the night.

For a different take on the night read FL’s other review of the gig