Brixton Academy, Sunday March 6th 2005.
Some people, they sure know how to annoy. Not Embrace, oh no no, they play with broad grins on their faces, obviously enjoying performing at the biggest venue they've played in in years. No, the people who annoy are the idiotic twats who paid seventeen pounds fifty to see the band, and then choose to talk all the way through it. Or scream nonsensically at them. Or mock Danny's emotional singing every chance they get. I change my location five times throughout the evening, but can't escape them, they're bloody everywhere.
Three months ago at the Hammersmith Palais it wasn't like this at all. That gig was the best I've been to in the last five years, and the fans there lapped up every minute of it. And sure, they screamed and shouted, but only appreciatively, and the atmosphere was one of pure devotion for a band everyone had written off, and who had then come back with their strongest album yet. Alas now Embrace
Okay, rant over, but it had to be made, mainly because it affects this review. I just couldn't get in to Embrace because of them, everytime I'd become lost in the moment, I'd be rudely ripped out of it by one of these bastards. But it wasn't helped by a sound system where Danny's voice was often drowned out by the guitars, nor a less then inspired selection of songs either. Back at the Hammersmith Palais they'd stuck to playing most of the new album, with a fair sprinkling of new songs and old classics from the first album. Tonight we get too many songs from the back catalogue, but from those albums that everyone prefers to forget.
A couple of the new songs premiered tonight, like Contender, and New Song Number One, fail to set the world on fire, or even the cigarette I'm holding at the time, and they're nowhere near as powerful as the new songs premiered in Hammersmith. Contender is the worst offender tonight, it's almost dancey, and Danny's vocals just don't suit that kind of sound at all. It reminds of the funkier songs like Hooligan, and I'd really hoped that the band had moved away from that area, it really didn't work for them. Still, it's just one song. And before this review becomes overly negative, the last half of the gig saves the day. Fireworks, Save Me, Wonder Of You, Out of Nothing, the now almost infamously touching cover of D12's How Come, all are beautifully affecting, and even manage to shut up some of the simpletons seemingly hellbent on ruining the gig tonight.
If only the sound quality had been better, and if Brixton Academy operated a no twats policy, and Danny and co. had played less songs from the dodgy years, it could have been almost as special as that already mentioned far too often gig three months ago. Ah well, we'll always have Hammersmith. It's just a shame we won't always have Brixton too.
Alex Finch.
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