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X-POSURE Listener Blog 4 - Alexandra Palace

added 26 July 2011 at 10.16

This week's listener blog comes from Grant Plumridge. Read his account of Grinderman, Caribou and Portishead playing at Alexandra Palace here.

"So the the All Tomorrow’s Party franchise parked in Ally Pally for the weekend and I managed to get a couple of tickets for the Sunday thanks to XFM – pretty cool eh?

Unfortunately we arrived too late to see Scum which was a mistake. However, I was really looking forward to seeing Swans and they didn’t disappoint.

They create a hypnotising racket - loud piercing drums and other assorted percussion backing with screaming vocals and huge sweeping guitars.

Swans are the stuff of legend and on the basis of Sunday’s outing it’s is pretty easy to see why – no holding back. On the mental scale – 9/10 – god know what these boys eat for breakfast. They are probably the lizard master race.

Ears in a state of shock, it was time for my mate and I to have a frosty beverage on the Pally patio overlooking the London panorama and chill with our compatriots – it was beautiful man.
 
It was then back for Grinderman. Grinderman work well in the live context - Nick Cave’s diction means that his vocals are not drowned out by the band and you can actually hear what he’s banging on about.

Big statements, big drums and sustained interludes of guitar bowing madness. ‘I Just Want To Relax’, ‘Love Yourself’, all the favs were there, passion delivered in crates. Very mad and pretty cool in a bonkers OTT way  – kind of what one might expect from ATP.

More beer. More chilling. More random conversations.

And so to the headliners. Portishead created moments of intimate poignancy and raucous drum tech savagery. I am not sure whether their intimacy worked in the vaulted airiness of Ally Pally but when in attack mode the band certainly delivered.

Legs were beginning to ache by this stage so we ducked out mid-set and returned refreshed for the storming end number – not sure what it was but there seemed to be a lot of beaming smiles in the audience.

And finally Caribou – slabs of sound layered and condensed about an insistent punchy drum beat. Nice strobes too. Caribou were great - their drummer is greater.

All in all it was a beautiful crazy day although not as crazy as the weekend headlines."

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