The War On Drugs & Spoon – Spark Arena: December 2, 2023

The War On Drugs headlined a big night in that also included Spoon and Indigo Sparke. The 13th Floor was there to catch all the action.

It’s a generous evening coming up. Three acts, one show. Spoon hasn’t been here since the Big Day Out. This is a big night in. Better sound for it being inside anyway. Momentum building through the evening towards the headliners.

And the generosity is close at hand. Old-school note pad in hand I’m asked if I’m a journalist. Sort of I reply. By night sometimes at gigs anyway. OK, he says I’m going to buy you a beer. He did. Maybe he heard Chris Schultz’s excellent podcast last week on The Spinoff asking Where has all the music journalism gone?  Too late, to ask, my benefactor has disappeared into the crowd and Indigo Sparke is on…

Indigo Sparke

At the early hour of 6.40pm she takes the stage along with Adam and Jeremy (no last names) from New York on bass and drums.  Only a Whammy-sized audience so far within the cavernous arena. Yet none of the usual talking- over-openers that kiwi audiences are notorious for. A generous attentiveness.

The songs demand a reverence. Sparke’s voice is ethereal, hints of Kate Bush and the emotional intensity and other-worldliness of Aldous Harding. But none of the strangeness. Her fingers picking and offering delicate song. I can’t take my eyes off Adam the drummer, extracting extraordinary sounds with colourful brushes.

She’s an unfamiliar name to me. I quickly glance at her website. Someone describes her songs as having a ‘haunted spaciousness’. Apt.  Named by her artist parents for a Duke Ellington song (Mood indigo) and raised on a diet of Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. Prescient

Most songs are from her recent album Hysteria (produced by The National’s Aaron Dressner). Generously revealing. For the few there at the dinner hour, rewards are rich: atmospheric songs that shared shamelessly with the world.

Spoon

The arena’s pretty full now and I get the sense some are here mainly for Spoon. As good as it gets for an opening band. From Austin Texas and a unit since 1993.  November last year they had a Grammy nomination for best rock album. It’s apparent why.

To the sound of a soul revue, the five walk on stage and begin the business. Clean, loud, driving sound. An impeccably tight unit. Songs delivered with passion and precision.

Founder and lead singer/guitarist Britt Daniel is a commanding figure up front. The other band member my eyes keep going to is Gerardo Larios variably on guitar and keys and consistently involved up front in a full-bodied way.

A fleetingly Stones-like beat. A John Lennon cover, Isolation, Daniel dropping to his knees. Late-set My Mathematical Mind’s themes of apocalypse and foreboding has me thinking Dave Dobbyn’s Don’t Hold Your Breath. Suddenly its four guitars and an axeman’s carnival up there.

Quick segues between styles and songs. Precise endings. Cascades of sound. A Spoon-full of goodness.

The War on Drugs

It’s the dot of 9pm and the seven band members appear to a rapturous welcome, launching into An Ocean in Between the Waves with the two hallmarks of The War on Drugs sound: full yet delicate rhythms and Adam Granduciel’s plaintive voice.  A touch nasal, a little drawl, hints of Dylan and a strong sense of nostalgia.

Second up its Pain. Raw purity of emotion. In moments Granduciel could be speaking to any of us. Then Arms Like Boulders, a deep dive back to their debut album in 2008.

The arena’s wide stage is filled with the band’s sound and presence, but I have a niggle of different nostalgia: for a time of seeing them in a smaller venue. Maybe it’s just that that it’s a year since I’ve been to the vastness of an arena show. I feel more a spectator rather than participant.  It’s the scale that success brings.

Granduciel is a passionate figure to watch. Plain green T-shirt, moving as if guitar is body-part. Mop of hair at time obscuring his face, suggestive of mate Kurt Vile whose bands they each helped form.

There’s a brief discussion on stage of whether this is their 2^nd  or 3^rd visit. They settle for third and Adam references the first Powerstation gig as birthplace of a song improvised that night on a borrowed Stratocaster.

Mid-set it’s a cover. Warren Zevon’s Play It All Night Long. Faithful in tone but entirely theirs. Superb.  Harmonias Dream could be a train ride. Rhythm suggestive of the vibrations of riding the rails.

There’s a yearning in his voice and an evocation of landscape in the band’s songs that places The War on Drugs in the lineage of Tom Petty and maybe Springsteen. A nostalgia reinforced by the titles of late-set favourites Thinking of a Place and I Don’t Live Here Anymore.  A yearning for an America, or world at large, fast receding.  Somewhere in a song I hear the lyric ‘I just don’t feel the same anymore”  amid the swirling sound and light. The theme is pervasive.

I walk to the ferry feeling like I’ve been taken on a long train ride across America. Not the America of mass shootings and toxic politics, but the one of vast landscapes and small towns populated with character and kindness.

A generous night.  Truly uplifting.

Robin Kearns

Click on any image to view a photo gallery by Brenna Jo Gotje.

The War On Drugs:

Spoon:

Indigo Sparke:

Spoon Setlist:

Wild

Don’t You Ever (The Natural History cover)

Do You

The Way We Get By

The Underdog

My Babe

Play Video

Got Nuffin

Isolation (John Lennon cover)

The Hardest Cut

My Mathematical Mind

I Turn My Camera On

Inside Out

Rent I Pay

 

The War on Drugs Setlist

An Ocean in Between the Waves

Pain

Arms Like Boulders

I Don’t Wanna Wait

Strangest Thing

Harmonia’s Dream

Red Eyes

Play It All Night Long (Warren Zevon cover)

Old Skin

Eyes to the Wind

Under the Pressure

I Don’t Live Here Anymore

Occasional Rain

Thinking of a Place