Thursday, May 14, 2009

Cage the Elephant - Manchester Academy 2, 12th May 2009

So then, Cage the Elephant. As soon as the lights went off in the Academy 2, the kids cheered loudly. The kids started jumping up and down. The kids like Cage the Elephant.

The kids, it has to be said, are a bunch of clueless fuckwits.

The band churned out a solid set of some unremarkable and some downright awful tunes while lead singer Matt Shultz, praised elsewhere for his energy and presence, seemingly had his macho posturing choreographed for him, right down to the removal of his shirt for the encore. Yawn.

A special mention to the rhythm guitarist with little rhythm (or knowledge of anything but bar chords - thank you for pointing that out, Bon) stood dead centre right at the front of the stage and gurned along with the words. You irritating fuck.

It wasn't all bad, single "Ain't No Rest For the Wicked" had a great energy to it and got most of the venue going, while “Lotus”and “In one Ear” both brought out flowing funky grooves, but all too often the other songs descended into a swampy blues-rock mess, one song merging into another similar sounding song after similar sounding song in an almost endless circle of crushing mediocrity from which my only solution was to go to the bar and get more Jack Daniels.

Oh well, as if they'd actually care what I think. I am a grown man in my thirties, not a teenage girl. (well, apart from when I'm chatting online to other creepy old men also pretending to be teenage girls.)

Just to clear things up, there's no photo at the top of this from the gig as I couldn't get to the front without rubbing up against a crowd of under-age girls, and that would probably get the police involved (again...) There's a lot I'd do for this crappy blog, but signing the sex offenders register isn't one of them.

Right, that's it. That's my review. It's over. No free MP3s this time around, you leechers. Go away.