PENDULUM - Live - Carling Academy, Bristol - 6 May 2008

PENDULUM - Live - Carling Academy, Bristol - 6 May 2008
Back in the day I used to work myself up into a righteous teenage fury wondering why music magazines would send journalists to watch bands that they clearly didn't like in order that those same hacks could write reviews reflecting on their superior music taste and sniping at both band and audience. But that isn't something I'm going to let get in the way of the fact here that I don't like Pendulum, reflecting on my superior music taste or sniping at both the band and their audience. Or maybe I'm just old and jaded. But let's face it - when you're fifteen (and let's be clear about this - judging by the crowd here, the average age of Pendulum's audience is fifteen) anything fast and loud generally provokes predictable and ridiculous levels of excitement. Their brutally simple yet far from subtle combination of drum and bass speed with rock guitar loudness, leaves nothing to chance and covers both the fast and the loud bases. Unleashing this hybrid in front of 500 people half their age who are even more convinced of Pendulum's brilliance than the band themselves is pretty much like shooting fish in a barrel. But I don't want to get ahead of myself. Let's just say that the evening didn't get off to a good start with the DJ. Stage-happy to the point of indignity, he spent a large proportion of his time stabbing the air at dramatic moments of his set peaking with some terrible dance remix of Rage Against The Machine's Killing In The Name - a record that he would have put to better use (had he actually been using vinyl) throwing at whoever was behind the mixing desk in order to get some bottom end on the PA. Fortunately the under-enthusiastic sound man woke up before the arrival of Pendulum possibly as a consequence of the over-enthusiastic lights-man who for the entire night seemed bent on achieving total epileptic meltdown of the crowd. I have to admit to being intrigued about the nature of Pendulum's live performance because for too long I've heard them described in awed tones...yet when the 'drum and bass Prodigy' finally took to the stage, was their inexplicable popularity reflected in a satanic stage presence to rival that of Liam, Keith and Maxim? No. They looked like 4 normal blokes a little less sweaty and a little more old than those before them. Well, not quite all. There were a few old ravers/ hardcore casulaties there too - easily recognised by their rigidly gurning faces, sweaty naked beer guts and crap 'junglist pressha' dance. Tellingly the band's cover of The Prodigy's Voodoo People was received rapturously although that's not to say new single Propane Nightmares was shunned either. It has to be said that I can handle the dnb, I can handle the rock guitars and I can even (just about) handle the weedy rock vocals but where Pendulum really plumb musical depths is their penchant for hideous rave-y synth noises which I'm sure were being banged out on an improvisational basis at many points. Then singer Rob Swire announces that they have a new LP on the way and that they were 'movin up and 'movin on' and it was hard not to hope that the direction was back to Australia. When it was time for an 'oldie' (in this case Blood Sugar, the hordes erupted in mass hysteria knowing every word of the intro ('Ladies and Gentlemen...'etc.) and some of the more excitable crowd members were engaged in what used to be called 'wrecking'. Not that Swire was hot on the moves either though Perry threw some rock shapes with that guitar/bass. In short the whole gig was a bit like teenage sex, lots of noise, boundless enthusiasm, a bit self-conscious and absolutely no style whatsoever. But despite all that - I can't bring myself to hate Pendulum. Their core audience might still be in school but they fucking love that band. And the band love them. It's niceness that was encapsulated at the point when one very sweaty bare-chested skinny and euphoric teen in front of me turned round to check that he wasn't 'in my way'. He wasn't. I left the gig reflecting (as I made my way through crowds of kids and the parents waiting in cars to pick them up) that my fifteen year old self would have both a) most likely been into Pendulum and b) worked up a righteous teenage fury about this review.
LINKS:
Pendulum - myspace
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