The Phoenix Foundation – Powerstation (Concert Review)
An album-release show —and, let’s face it, that’s what the Phoenix Foundation played at Auckland’s Powerstation last night — is not the moment to win new converts. And, to be fair, much of the Phoenix Foundation’s music takes repeated listens, ideally over headphones in a darkened room in a questionably-enhanced frame of mind; it’s not the most immediately accessible music.
And this, then, was last night’s show in microcosm. When the Phoenix Foundation were good, they were playing tight, sharp songs like Bright Grey they were a truly engaging live presence, playing with energy and strength. Supernatural, a song, apparently, about chemtrails, was as close as the Phoenix Foundation get to conventional, straight-ahead rock, building as it did to a remarkable rockout of exceptional intensity. And Bright Grey, one of the band’s few songs that actually could make a viable single, and Give Up Your Dreams, title track of the album being showcased last night, were smartly-crafted art-rock gems.
Sadly, though, this happened less often than would have been ideal. Silent Orb, in the second half of the main set, dragged. Ideal though it undeniably must be for late-night student-flat listening, the song strayed dangerously close to ambient territory, sending a decent part of the otherwise quite devoted audience to the bar for a quick pint, although the bar staff might have struggled to hear their orders over the song’s positively seismic bass.
Part of the problem was the format of the evening’s show. The Powerstation’s stage is a touch cramped for a six-piece band, and frontman Samuel Flynn Scott’s keyboards constrained him and his bandmates even further, leading to a rather static performance. So when Scott droned his way through Prawn, I found my attention flagging. Perhaps Prawn, or Silent Orb, might not have been an ideal choice for a live performance, but the Phoenix Foundation had chosen to perform their new album in its entirety.
This perhaps wasn’t their best move. The audience — they played to sold-out Powerstation — were there largely to hear the band’s back catalogue, and while opener Mountain, which also opens the new album, saw some response from the crowd, it wasn’t until the encore, and in particular Buffalo, that the dancing started. Jason was an opportunity for Luke Buda to let go a little with his guitar playing, managing for a brief moment to sound like he was channeling Brian May, after an intro that offered a teasing sense of what the Small Faces might have sounded like on very different drugs.
An odd performance, then, overall. When they were good, the Phoenix Foundation were very, very good. But when they weren’t, I’m afraid, the show rather dragged its feet. But it ended on quite a high note, and that’s what the audience took away from the Powerstation last night.
Steve McCabe
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Phoenix Foundation Set List:
Mountain
Bob Lennon John Dylan
Subbed
Damn The River
Playing Dead
Let Me Die A Woman
Going Fishing
Prawn
Silent Orb
Black Mould
Supernatural
Celestial Bodies
Myth
Trans Fatty Acid
Bright Grey
Give Up Your Dreams
[encore]
Jason
Buffalo
