March 28, 2024

The prog kings of 2017 are doing a tour of the north and Brighton

Adore _ Repel - 7_preview

I was never one for standing up at gigs unless I was wasted on vodka and it was all about moshing. The amount of vodka I used to drink though wasn’t good for the complexion, so I had to stop. Consequently I find drinking beer has a depressing effect on me, and even when I like the band, standing up all evening is a bit of a chore, not good for the knees and I get a sore back, and people are just so rude and pushy at these things, that I get to the point that I feel like someone should be paying me to do this.

So, then, the biggest accolade I could pay to ‘Adore//Repel’ is that I would just love to listen them play in a huge stadium, rocking the place out to their poignant, melancholic, progressive rock (at the moment they seem to be resigned to playing on the top of houses). I wouldn’t be standing with the sweaty masses mind, I’d be elevated thirty/forty foot above by a tensile steel wire attached to a crane, parked outside the stadium, in a Chesterfield’s sofa with loved ones or friends, with a giant mug of Cocoa, and loads of chocolate and ginger chip biscuits (that tensile wire would have to have been tested).

And I feel this way because six months ago I heared (and reviewed) Adore’s Empty Orchestra LP, a great progressive rock album. It is a rich blend of soaring riffs and melancholy motifs, that remind you of the past, ten years ago, or some kind of era that you never lived through, which you think about with fondness. Like classical music the aim is to repeat, modify, repeat, modify, come back full circle, and do it all over again. And when it works, as it works here, it works beautifully.

Progressive rock should be like an instrumental ride through the rapids, which is what Adore mostly provide. Furthermore Adore have a definite direction, or journey that they’re going in. Its a rollocking, buzzing rise over the rapids, like I said, with melancholy and euphoric bits inbetween. Its like a life story retold. Adore//Repel draw on the Seattle guitar sound, which formed the platform for a new wave of progressive rock from the 1990s forwards, most of which, sadly has been lost in the mists of time.

Fact is though their up and coming tour is not quite what I had in mind (see venues and dates below), though it is possibly an advance on standing up on top of houses (they’ve at least been let inside). They’re not coming down to the Big Smoke unfortunately, so I wont be able to see them, but I would have otherwise. I’d highly recommend.

OCTOBER
 
Thu 26 GLASGOW Old Hairdressers
Fri 27 HUDDERSFIELD Parish
Sat 28 LIVERPOOL Maguire’s
Sun 29 HULL New Adelphi
NOVEMBER
 
Fri 03 BOLTON The Alma
Sat 04 BRIGHTON East Street Tap

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