Pivot + My Disco @ The Zoo

I have never been impressed with Bloc Party: they have a good drummer but the best thing about their songs always seems to be the intros – as soon as those awful vocals and the terrible lyrics start I’m over it.  I saw them once, maybe at Glastonbury, and they weren’t very good then either.  So despite the huge demand from photographers to get their gig, I wasn’t interested in the slightest in even throwing my hat into the ring to cover it.  But being a Friday night I needed to go and see something so chose the math rock/post-rock/didn’t-this-just-used-to-be-called-instrumental-music-when-we-were-kids double whammy of Pivot and My Disco at The Zoo. (Sudden thought: Maybe Bloc Party would be better as an instrumental band…)

I photographed My Disco back in April but it was yet another photographic nightmare, with the support bands having much better lighting than the headliners and with me giving up in the end and going to see sixfthick over at Ric’s instead.  This time the lighting was a lot better for them but there is something just unfulfilling about their music.  Using only guitar, bass and drums there is an emptiness in their overall sound that no matter of guitar effects seemed to be able to fill out, not helped by the use of a guitar with an aluminium neck, which gives a very cold, metallic sound.  It also felt like there was a heavy reliance on a very similar rhythm for a number of the songs, causing a lack of variety over their set.

With keyboards and laptops in use, Pivot’s sound was fuller and more varied straight from the off.  But ultimately I find that there’s only so much math rock/post-rock/didn’t-this-just-used-to-be-called-instrumental-music-when-we-were-kids that I can take before my boredom threshold is reached, so I didn’t stay until the end of their set.  I guess I’m just too big a fan of vocal melodies… 

Similar to the My Disco show earlier in the year, the lighting got worse the longer the night went on, compounding a week of photographic misery.

A few more photos on flickr.

Pivot

My Disco

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