Right away, with their dark-charged atmospheric tunes, somber bass riffs, and heavy ambiance, I noticed how much their sound had changed since ‘Home’, a hit song from their 2007 ‘Trading Twilight for Daylight’ album. No more floating, bright vocals, it is now all about darkness, heaviness and uneasiness. There is a certain evolution and it is not toward the light, as their last album is very appropriately entitled ‘Remind me where the light is’. However, the songs remain anthems with the powerful vocals of Rachel Stolte, whose voice and stage presence could evoke a softer side of a Annie Lennox.
She was only doing the vocals on Monday, whereas I had seen her playing keyboard in the past, whereas Solon Bixter (formerly of 30 Seconds to Mars) was playing guitar as usual, and they were accompanied by a drummer and a bassist. Rachel was first caught by surprise to see the audience so close to the stage, ‘You are going to smell us!’ she said before starting.
The opening of some of their songs had the tenebrous feeling of, let’s say, an Interpol melody, or the electro beat of a Depeche Mode song, like ‘Story’ with its entrance of pounding drumbeats.
It’s certainly more aggressive, and sometimes more wide-screen than what they have done before, with obsessive guitars and layered sounds building-up a bigger but slow sound than I would not dare to compare to U2,… but yeah too late, I said it, as this name crossed my mind more than a few times during their set, in particularly during ‘Warning’ or ‘Houses’.
They sang a few songs (‘Story’, ‘Warning’, ‘Houses’, ‘Numbers’) from their 2009 album and Rachel said they will also be playing some new songs, like ‘For weeks’, ‘Holes’ and ‘Condemnation’, which seemed to be carrying that same heavy load of obscurity. A technical problem for the bass player made them stop their set twice, and it was the only quiet moments during an epic concert.