 I
attended the Alkaline Trio show in Birmingham
a few days ago and was majorly disappointed as
they played the Academy and there was a serious
lack of people in fact there was so little people
in the venue that they could have easily played
the Academy 2, due to the lack of people the atmosphere
was really bad and Alkaline Trio came across a
bit stale on stage and I went home very disappointed
and feeling very optimistic about the Bristol
show.
We headed to Bristol on what appeared to be a
hot summer day, but by the time we decided to
make it along to the venue the heavens opened
from above and got us all pretty soaked on the
short walk to the venue, we got in just before
the main support band Set Your Goals took to the
stage, the first thing I noticed when I got in
was that once again the venue appeared to be very
empty, even the upstairs bit leading to the Academy
2 was closed, however I collected my photo pass
and made my way to the front for Set Your Goals.
 Set You Goals took to the stage to play a short
30 minutes set that consisted of 9 songs and throughout
the whole set they displayed passionate energy
and style as well as tight musicianship, it was
interesting to see the 6 members of the band fitting
on the small stage at the Academy and jumping
across it like there life depended on it.
The best thing about Set Your Goals is how they
are a hardcore band mixed with poppy pop who bring
the best of both worlds into their music, they
bounce about on stage like men possessed with
vocalists Jordan Brown and Matt Wilson mixed vocal
styles working incredibly well as a team.
 The set list consisted of a mix of songs from
both their albums but the highlights to me were
‘Echoes’, ‘Look Closer’,
‘Mutiny’ and ‘Summer Jam’
which happens to be my favourite set Your Goals
song and sounded even better live.
The set that Set Your Goals played was so good
that throughout the whole set I was thinking to
myself how are Alkaline Trio going to beat this
especially after how poor their show in Birmingham
was and moments later I soon found out.
When Alkaline Trio took to the stage at 9.15pm
the venue was still half empty but because the
Academy is quite a weird shaped small intimate
venue the emptiness of the venue did not notice
as much as in Birmingham and did not affect the
sound in any way and proved to be more of an intimate
show for both the band and crowd.
 Alkaline Trio wasted no time and shot straight
into ‘Private Eye’ a song which had
the crowd singing-a-long word for word, even the
photographers including myself were struggling
not to sing-a-long whilst taking our shots.
There were quite a few highlights throughout
the show with the double whammy of ‘We’ve
Had Enough’ and ‘This Could Be Love’
from Good Mourning being played back to back being
one of the main highlights for me and also hearing
the crowd nearly bring the roof down whilst singing
to ‘Stupid Kid’ a song which has been
left out of Alkaline Trio’s set for far
too long now, the set also featured other great
songs such as ‘Dead On The Floor’,
‘Warbrain’, ‘This Addiction’
and ‘Clavicle’.
A three song en-core was played which consisted
of ‘Fine’, a cover of the classic
Misfits song ‘Skulls’ and everyone’s
favourite sing-a-long acoustic number ‘Radio’,
for the first two songs Matt Skiba and Derek Grant
swapped positions with Matt taking a spot behind
Derek’s drum kit and Derek taking on Matt’s
guitar and vocal duties, this was a major highlight
of the set and just shows how creative Alkaline
Trio can be when they want to be, the show finished
with the whole crowd singing about “Dogs
shitting razor blades” during the fantastic
‘Radio’.
 The set list was slightly odd it is like Alkaline
trio want to forget the past 5 years of their
career as nothing from their 2008 album ‘Agony
And Irony’ was played, only one song from
their 2005 album ‘Crimson’ was played
and that was ‘Sadie’ a song that originally
appeared back in 2004 on their split EP with One
Man Army, now I know they have got a lot of slack
in the past with people saying they were trying
too hard to go down the mainstream radio friendly
route with those albums but at the same time they
picked up a lot of fans with ‘Crimson’
as during that touring cycle they were playing
to the same sized venues but each and every show
was sold out and now they are lucky to be playing
to half the amount of people that they were back
then.
Alkaline Trio sounded and looked tight as anything
on stage, they are one of those lucky bands who
manage to sound exactly the same live as they
do on CD, however the main downside to their live
show is the fact that they don’t interact
with the crowd much and they’re really isn’t
much movement on stage, they are nothing like
Green Day or your Blink 182’s of the punk
rock world who sound tight and also put on an
energetic show that you will never forget.
Overall the show was a big improvement on Birmingham
and I managed to watch my favourite band ever
near the top of their game whilst catching up
with some old punk rock friends whilst meeting
some new ones.
Set Your Goals 4/5
Alkaline Trio 4/5
Review By Trigger |
