Pet Shop Boys // Electric Tour // Sept 25 2013 // Sony Centre for the Performing Arts // Toronto
I’d been waiting (somewhat passively, assuming it’d never happen) to see Pet Shop Boys live for over 25 years. So for me to be disappointed they’d have to be pretty terrible and put on a spectacularly poor show. Which, of course, they weren’t (terrible) and it wasn’t (poor) and I wasn’t (disappointed).
Grinderman @ The Phoenix, Toronto, November 11th. The strangest part of the night wasn’t that Nick Cave is beginning to look a little like Cavil from Battlestar Galactica on a bender these days. Jowly. Maybe he always did, but last night was the first time I’d seen him in the flesh.
Nor was the strangest thing—and I didn’t expect this—that Warren Ellis is absolutely batshit crazy. I’d seen Bad Seeds concert films and he was certainly dynamic in them, but in Grinderman he is a complete wild man. Feral. Maybe he always was, but this was the first time I’d seen him in the flesh.
Ellis definitely stole the show, coming-off as genuinely on the edge where Cave’s energetic performance seemed like a contrived act. Again, it being the first time I’d seen him, it was hard to tell if he’s become a caricature of the Nick Cave persona or if it’s always been an act. It was a good act though. No one plays Nick Cave better than Nick Cave. Except Warren Ellis who plays Nick Cave and Charlie Manson simultaneously.
Bone Rolling Reviews 