M83 & School Of Seven Bells @ The Opera House

November 24th, 2008

Back in May of this year, I was in Montreal enjoying the city’s Mutek, which happened to coincide with a visit from M83 on tour in support of Saturdays=Youth. I’d forgotten about one of my least favourite Montreal quirks – that when an opening band is a no-show, the headliner takes the stage early in its place. Total bummer. I’ve been to hundreds of shows in various cities and the only time this has ever happened has been in Montreal (a few shows come to mind).

So naturally I was zipping around the city coming from other Mutek sets, and I arrived just in time to catch the LAST few songs M83 performed, because little did I know, he had gone on about forty minutes early to replace the no-show opener. Grr. Needless to say, there was no way I was going to miss M83′s full set this time around -which wasn’t really a worry since I was equally pumped to check out openers School Of Seven Bells.

New York trio School Of Seven Bells is made up of Benjamin Curtis, formerly of Secret Machines, and beautiful twin sisters (I thought I saw a similarity!) Alejandra and Claudia Deheza. Their debut album Alpinisms has been in heavy rotation on my iPod for the past few months so I was curious to see what they sounded like live. I have to admit, the songs don’t grab you as quickly in a live setting as they did on the polished album – it really depends on the band and genre of music. But this time, it was just a little dull for me…I mean, it is mostly eectronic stuff, so the vibe reminded me a bit of the stoic folks in Ladytron on stage.

When M83 finally hit the stage after 10pm, I was readier than ever to hear my anthems (well, anthems is a bit strong of a word to describe lulling songs like these…more like, mantras) Skin Of The Night and Highway Of Endless Dreams. Both sounded SUPERB in a live setting. Luckily I was quasi-leaning on a few people by this point so I was able to close my eyes and gently sway without fear of collapsing from the beautiful sounds I was hearing. Antony Gonzalez has got a full band with him these days – co-vocalist Morgan Kibby (who kept putting on/taking off these super hideous – clearly fake – granny glasses. Seriously, this ‘trend’ needs to die ASAFP) and a drummer set behind a lit up plexiglass barrier. The sound was great, but I’ll admit that Antony kinda seemed like he was phoning it in – the verve and passion that he projected at the Lee’s Palace show in 2005 were both gone. Maybe he’s exhausted from touring this album? Who knows. Anyway, here’s the setlist!

M83 Setlist
November 20, 2008 @ The Opera House, Toronto

Intro
Run Into Flowers
I Guess I’m Floating
Moonchild
Kim And Jessie
We Own The Sky
*
Graveyard Girl
Gone (?)
Teen Angst
Highway Of Endless Dreams
Don’t Save Us From The Flames
Skin Of The Night
Guitar And A Heart

Encore:
Couleurs

Posted on Monday, November 24th, 2008 at 3:01 pm by Kat and is filed under Concerts & Events.