A few weeks ago Howling Bells announced that they’ll be back on tour again, I was immediately excited to see them play but alas that excitement was shortlived, their actual headline gig in Kings College was clashing with of Montreal’s gig in Koko and I already had tickets for of Montreal! S**tsticks! I did consider selling my of Montreal ticket but I knew it simply was a show I could not miss (and I was right) and I wasn’t keen on selling tickets at such short notice. Luckily (or perhaps not? (more on that later)) they were also supporting Mercury Rev who were playing in Shepherds Bush Empire. I think my immediate reaction was “aargh not shepherds bush again!” but since it’s been a while since I’ve seen Howling Bells play, I decided to bite the bullet and spend £20 odd (and Okkervil River tickets were only £14!) to see Mercury Rev Howling Bells.
It was the second time in a week where I had to pay Shepherds Bush Empire a visit, though everytime I’ve successfully smuggled a camera in, I still find the place pretty scary and traumatic, though the excitement and adreneline involved is always priceless so nonetheless I took both of my cameras to the gig and used my new and improved smuggling technique to hopefully get my camera in. Last time was far too easy since I wasn’t able to fully appreciate the thought involved in smuggling the camera, this time my techniques really came into play, because alas ladies and gentleman, I GOT CAUGHT AGAIN! haha.
Juanita having an orgasm haha
This time they were convinced my secret compartment had something suspicious so I surrendered and showed them the lenses I had stored there (the camera body was somewhere else!). I said i brought them there but won’t be using them. He asked me if I had any cameras and I thought as distraction, I should show him a compact camera to convince him no person is silly enough to bring two cameras into a gig (fortunately for me I’ve gone past the zone of being silly and back to sly again). He was silly enough to suggest that I could fit a lens into eve, my poor little compact camera! Almost to a point where he said I should goto reception and hand in my compact!
I argued with him that it’s a compact camera and that you couldn’t put lenses into compacts and dared him to try. I gave him that frustrated look and turned around as well just to show him that he’s holding people up behind me, he tried desperately searching my long coat I use as distraction hoping to find the DSLR body but to no avail, it simply wasn’t in the bag or the coat! The technique worked! (Woo!). He kinda reminded me of the Ignore Stubborn Sales Assistant I encourted when getting my hard drive caddy fixed, just to a point where he had to get something out of me, fortunately he failed and just let me walk through with my lenses, my compact camera and of course, my DSLR body he failed to discover! Mwhahah. Me - 4, Shepherds Bush Empire - 0
Aviv Geffen
This was pretty much my last Shepherds Bush Empire gig I’ll have this year so thank god for that. Inside I managed to get straight to the front pretty easily and converse with the kind people around me. The fans for mercury rev are pretty weird I must say, one of them joked around about how he was only served plastic cups in the bar because people were afraid they would bottle Mercury Rev, which he joked around saying Mercury Rev aren’t the kind of band you’d be throwing bottles since they’re not really a “rocky” band (in which I strong disagreed after seeing them play ;)).
The first act, Aviv Geffen was quite a fruity one, I found it funny how he’d let his “band” come in before he entered the stage, granted he does forget that he’s a support band and pretty much noone (including me) has heard of his great works. They were quite cheesy and overly dramatic, I was more intrigued with getting my mobile internet to connect in the venue than with the band unfortunately. I did manage to take a quick shot of them (out comes camera, SNAP, camera back in bag).
Once the first act was over, it was then a quick review on lenses I should be using for Howling Bells. I managed to smuggle the 28mm F1.8 so I was keen on using it, but sadly I think it wasn’t as useful as I imagined it to be in this venue, maybe if I was in the pit but certainly not where I was standing. It was fun watching the roadies set up the stage, at one point the guy got an electric shock teehee, they had to sing and play the bass guitar at the same time to discover where the source of the shocks were, and that meant getting more electric shocks! They managed to find it in the end and had the power replaced so the bassist wouldn’t have to deal with that. Got to love roadies, I remember talking to Chris from Muse about how when they were doing that festival where the wind and rain were all kinds of crazy (i think it was the hurricane one), they left the roadies to quickly risk their lives and get all the gear back inside, but I suppose that is their job. Poor roadies.
Twas hard getting a good landscape shot :(
Anyway, Howling Bells appeared on stage and Juanita, the singer greeted us with a very silent and whispery “hello”. I think we were shy. She went on to say, “We’re howling Bells” in a whispery voice and asked who we were (in which I tried shouting out LUNDUN but was too late *sniff*). Twas unfortunately that there weren’t too many Howling Bells fans in the house/empire (all venues should end in Empire, it sounds epic, Brixton Empire, Hoxton Bar and EMPIRE, Carling EMPIRE etc). Juanita was sporting a nice leather jacket and a new short and cute hairdo (I knew it was short but this was the first time I saw it in person). The setlist was pretty short tonight, the first three songs; Setting Sun, Wishing Stone and Cities were from their first LP (though Cities is a B Side) whilst the other 4 tracks were from their new album. I haven’t heard much of their new work, just Into the Chaos so it was all pretty new for me, here’s a video of them playing Into the Chaos:
Probably should of zoomed in for this video but I wasn’t thinking too far in advance I’m afraid. I really like this track, it’s beginning to grow on me and I can’t wait for the new album to come out (which is February so grr!). The new numbers seem to include more dancing from Juanita, my memory of Howling Bells was that Juanita was more of a swayer during the songs than dancing. We did get a lot of swaying in the beginning though, and man it was hard taking photos of someone who sways around (though that makes it more fun). Photo wise it was pretty difficult to take shots because the lighting was horrificly dark, I pretty much had to stick to around iso 400/800 in order to take a shot. Though usually that’s a case for support bands, they get mean sounds and mean lighting! Hope you guys like the photos still though, i did try 
I really like Juanita's new hairdo, here she's clapping :p
At one point someone heckled her to play “The Night is Young” but she said no and said that the next new song had the word night in it though. It was a nice number and had more clapping and synths involved, I never really noticed much synth work in the previous album so it was nice seeing that included, just hopefully not in mass proportions. The other new songs involved a lot of dancing and drumming which was fun! It was a fairly short set so there wasn’t much to talk about. Howling Bells have still got it and this short set was just a taser (yup, taser) for things to come once their new album is released.
That’s about it, I’ll write about Mercury Rev another time since I still have to process the photos there, to give you an idea of the entry I’m just going to write about how bored I was and how I had to keep myself awake by engrossing myself into the crazy strobe lights that made my eyes hurt at the end of the gig. So yeah, more Mercury Rev bashing another time (sorry mercury rev :p).
More shots in the Howling bells set
