★★★★ (Mercury Rev), ★★★½ (Ride)
As the mostly middle-aged audience took their seats for this double bill, several punters were overheard to declare they were “only here” for one band or the other.
It’s true that a Venn diagram of the subsequent performances by Ride, the Oxford shoegazers, and Mercury Rev, the dream poppers from Buffalo – their heydays 35 and 25 years ago respectively – would have few intersecting elements.
Ride were pioneers of the early-’90s shoegaze movement.
They both gave us lots of effects-driven guitar, a sprinkling of indie radio hits and a willingness to mesmerise, if we’d close our eyes and let them.
As to who swayed most new fans from the other side, the showmanship and sweeping melodies of Rev pipped the tightness and intensity of Ride.
Mercury Rev are the ostensible ’“support act” for this Australian tour so they came on first, although what happened next made a revolving headliner situation seem more appropriate.
For a band always so serious on record, frontman Jonathan Donahue had a surprisingly playful stage presence. He conducted the five-piece with enthusiastic hand gestures, added blasts of harmonica and hand-held synthesiser, and at one point commandeered the drums during a set just seven songs long yet transporting.
Much of that transcendence was down to Holes and The Dark Is Rising, two of the turn-of-the-century’s most shimmering ballads. The 58-year-old’s high notes still did them justice, as did stately keyboard playing from Marion Genser, and on the latter – mysteriously dedicated to Aussie band Died Pretty – a dramatic end that had Donahue silhouetted as if ascending to a heaven suggested by the roiling music. It was two minutes to match anything I’ve seen on stage.
It was a tough act to follow for Ride, so they instantly set the moshpit alight with the night’s highest tempo tune, Monaco, from this year’s seventh studio album.
It was still easy to hear why Ride were at the vanguard of the short-lived shoegaze movement. Their set was akin to a wall of sound, Andy Bell’s guitar by turns jangling and buzzsawing, weaving around Steve Queralt’s motorik bass and Loz Colbert’s martial drumming while Mark Gardener’s vocals prized mood over meaning.
The layered arrangements and limited sonic palette did, however, make highlights hard to pick from the general head-nodding goodness.
The strummed riff of Vapour Trail got the room swaying as one – it remains shoegaze’s signature moment – and the new Peace Sign showed they can still write an infectious pop tune a la Twisterella, while the synth-assisted Leave It All Behind was an explosive encore, Gardener bellowing for the ages.
An agreeable ride, then. But it was Mercury Rev that took us on a journey.
