Arriving at Rosemount I discovered a lot had changed since I was last there. Thankfully the main room no longer had a bar directly in the middle, as that had been an issue with previous shows. It is now sensibly along the right wall out the way, so now the view to the (also renovated) stage was completely uninterrupted. Well, except by tall bastards such as myself.
When opening band Skygazer started playing it became very clear why they were chosen. Their cool and collected style of prog rock matched perfectly with the overall tone of the night. It was my first time seeing them and I was surprised that they didn’t have a bassist, instead deciding to rely on their backing track for the bassline. Overall they had a very Porcupine Tree feel, which was cool. Interestingly their final song was completely different from the rest of their set. It was considerably heavier, consisting of several distinct movements with unique feel. I’m not entirely sure this band was my cup of tea, but if you like your prog then they should be for you.
At 10 the lights dimmed and sounds of the ocean from the opening track of Anathema’s latest album The Optimist filled the room. Frontman Vincent Cavanagh came out to applause and began to play the introduction to Leaving It Behind. This is where the technical problems of the night began, as it seemed that the gremlins had been very busy. Not ten seconds in, all audio from the laptop and keyboard cut out. This led to the rest of the band awkwardly coming out and profusely apologising. They soldiered on however and continued the set wonderfully.
Early on many of the songs were from the band’s latest album, as Leaving It Behind flowed nicely into Endless Ways. They stayed away from much of their earlier doom material, which was probably for the best as to create a coherent set. Other highlights included Springfield, which built to crescendo and neatly bookended by calmer segments.
The band were musically perfect, delivering studio accurate renditions of their songs. This was despite them being down a member, as apparently keyboardist John Douglas was having a temporary leave of absence to attend his daughter’s birthday (awwwww). Of particular note were the haunting vocals of Lee Douglas, who performed magnificently. Some singers go crazy on the vibrato in order to hide the fact that they can’t hold a note, but not Lee. She sang pitch perfect, never missing a beat.
Closing the set the band sadly had more technical problems. Vincent swapped to an acoustic guitar, but for some reason it didn’t make a sound. No matter, this was solved by the manual method of making loud noises; strumming really hard. The band made their epic finale and the punters were left very happy.
In total Anathema performed for an hour and a half, the perfect length for such a show. In an odd decision they decided to plan their walk-off encore at the one hour mark. Using some extremely high-level mathematics which took me ages and at least three calculator apps downloaded from the Google store, this made their set roughly 33.33% encore. No matter, I had a fantastic time and went home very happy. What a great way to spend a Sunday night.
PHOTO GALLERY
Photos by Oliver Yeudall
