By Jack Peat (@JackNPeat)
Explosions In The Sky
Support: We Were Promised Jetpacks
Royal Albert Hall
25.4.16
I feel I should start with a disclaimer. I’m not a music writer, nor am I a particularly big gig-goer, but there are certain concerts that compel even the most lukewarm music fan to pen their thoughts after.
Explosions In The Sky at the Royal Albert Hall is one such concert. That noise, in that venue. You didn’t have to be John Peel to know that works.
And so it was with a certain unfamiliarity that I acquainted myself with the music scene crowd again; a man resembling Richard Ayoade to my right (with a vague smell of old chicken chow mein) and a Dara Ó Briain doppelganger to my left (vaguely smelling of Red Stripe). Ah yes, now I remember.
The support group, We Were Promised Jetpacks, landed somewhere in between White Lies and Glasvegas with a suitable dose of post modern mixed in. They succeeded in playing an entertaining set where others may have shirked in this intimidating venue.. The dome of the Royal Albert Hall necessitates a cavernous noise and the booming power chords and fierce Scottish vocals ensured no corner was left untouched. There’s clearly a future for these lot, so long as there’s an appetite for the genre.
Explosions In The Sky made a modest entrance at around ten to nine (this is Kensington, darling) and played an uninterrupted set that lasted a blissful hour and a half or so. So suited are they to this venue that the notion of a resident band, like our resident Philharmonic orchestra, didn’t seem a perverse notion. I could have watched this all night and still turned up tomorrow for the same show with the same amount of enthusiasm.
Like many of their tracks, the set began with melodic sequences before reaching a crescendo to send shivers down the spine, with an ending so stark and startling it was as if the power had been cut.
It is my tendency to make gig reviews read like a scene from 50 Shades of Grey, I feel, which is why I will never make it as a music writer….