Cougar Microbes

This weekend I sat down to plan my gig calendar for the next few months. Here are the rest of my highlights for 2009:

Pixies Doolittle tour

The Pixies were one of my most cherished bands growing up and to date Doolittle is my favourite album. To catch the Boston legends on two occasions was an absolute treasure. The culmination of 15+ years of fandom!

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros live in London

August 2009 will remain a memorable date in Cougar history. Having briefly spun the 10-piece’s debut album in the build up I attended the Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros show at the Lexington with a mixture of bemusement and curiosity. It took just 45 minutes to convert me to their cause and it took two more shows for their album to became my top album of the year.

If Charles Manson and The Manson Family had focussed their energy on creating memorable pop they might have reached a fraction of the talent Ed Sharpe and co. possess

TRACKS:

Pixies – The Thing (allez-allez bootleg)

TVOTR are a band I have mentioned before on these pages and quite rightly so. Their latest album easily earned them a spot on my best of 2008 list and is still on heavy rotation at Cougar Microbes HQ. Having missed their previous London shows I was delighted to have bagged a ticket for Brixton Academy (no sponsor mention): one of my favourite London venues.

Did they live up to my (admittedly heightened) expectations? The short answer: YES!

The band crept onto the dimly lit stage, unassuming and unpretentious, and eased into the quieter track ‘Love Dog’ – an original way to open a show. As the song intensity grew (and with it the light show and band performance) so did the crowd reaction. On this note, it is worth mentioning that the audience was a well balanced mix of old and new fans alike demonstrating if it was ever needed that TV On The Radio have a vast appeal.

The set borrowed heavily from ‘Dear Science,’ featuring no fewer than 8 of its 11 tracks with the audience enthusiastically shouting every word. Clearly others were as impressed as I was by the new material. Sadly ‘DLZ’ didn’t make it this time but in compensation we got a thunderous rendition of ‘Wolf Like Me’ , a firm crowd favourite, in amongst the older gems.

At times the vocals were slightly muffled in the mix but this didn’t subtract from my overall enjoyment with a particularly intense ‘Red Dress’ sounding thunderous. Being joined by members of support band The Noisettes for 2006’s ‘A Method’ and ending with a rave-like rendition of ‘Staring At The Sun’, complete with big beat and raving crowd, was a nice touch and meant Brixton was vacated by a euphoric crowd.

I love it when a plan comes together!

MP3′s:

TV On The Radio – Red Dress