Shortly after finishing their first song on Tuesday night, The The front man Matt Johnson addressed the crowd at Massey Hall, explaining that their performance this evening would consist of two full sets, the first one focused on their new album Ensouled (their first studio album in nearly 25 years!) and the second based around all the old hits – two sets for the price of one, he joked.
Interestingly this is the third show I’ve seen over the past couple months that saw an act playing an opening set of their latest album in full followed by more of a greatest hits set, the other two acts being Frank Turner and PJ Harvey. I noted in my review of the PJ Harvey show that this could turn into a trend and I’d say three shows in fairly close succession counts as a trend in my book.
The new songs sounded quite good, giving off a somewhat mellow vibe, sometimes jazzy, at others mildly psychedelic, with some of the highlights including “Where Do We Go When We Die?” and “Sometimes I Drink My Coffee by the Grave of William Blake.” And while most in attendance were likely not too familiar with Ensouled, that first set went over well with the crowd and I overheard one fan during the intermission remarking on the quality of Johnson’s songcraft.
While the new stuff was fairly well-received, the second set was clearly what people came to hear, and Johnson acknowledged as much, telling the crowd, “You can stand up now” following the intermission. While the first set was a little mellower and more subdued, set #2 kicked things up a notch with tunes like “Armageddon Days (Are Here Again)” and “This Is The Day” helping to get the crowd on their feet. Johnson introduced the latter song by telling the story of the day he wrote it and how he was inspired to write about the idea that any day you wake up, there’s the possibility to make a change. That theme of making a change came up again toward the end of the set in another standout track, “Lonely Planet” and its lyric, “If you can’t change the world, change yourself.”
Speaking of change, Johnson noted at one point that in the six years since he and the band had last been to Toronto, a fair bit had changed – namely, the large amount of new buildings that had gone up in the intervening years. He commented that it was much the same in London and quickly polled the crowd on whether or not we liked it. Unsurprisingly, the consensus was no. “We’re only the people who live in these cities, they don’t care about us,” he said, quickly adding, “But let’s not get fed up.”
Luckily, the show didn’t descend at that point into a symposium on the evils of urban over-densification with Johnson opting rather to end things off on a high note with two of the band’s best loved songs – “Uncertain Smile” and “Giant,” both taken off the band’s 1983 debut album Soul Mining. All in all, an impressive performance.
