More Than Conquerors, Travis Is A Tourist, A Bad Cavalier
Limelight 2, Belfast
Wednesday 11th March, 2015
It is a very good time to be in More Than Conquerors right now. Still on a high from the critical appraisal of new single 'Red' - we've known for some time this band was likely to gain success further afield. With one eye on their spot at the coveted 'South by South West' (SXSW) Festival in Austin, Texas could they deliver their usual impressive live performance tonight? Across The Line arrived at The Limelight 2, excited to find out...
Opening proceedings were Belfast's Travis Is A Tourist, a musician who is getting better all the time. The solo project of former Colly Strings frontman - Travis Gilbert, here we see the punchier riffs of times gone by, smoothed out into something much more ethereal, though no less melodic. Everything from the mix of Drake's chart-topping "Hold On, We're Going Home" into crowd favourite "Paperweight", to the effortless interaction with the gathered crowd, radiated confidence.
Travis Is A Tourist's seamless transition from the loud, to quiet creates a relaxing middle ground with which they occupy; something not easily achieved. Final track "Loud" is met with near total silence (by those at the front anyway). To command such respect opening the show is commendable, though nothing less than deserved.
With only a handful of shows behind them we weren’t sure what to expect from A Bad Cavalier. A supergroup of sorts, the five piece's mix of ambient-post rock was distinctly more My Morning Jacket than their set up suggests. Blending well positioned synths with hard riffs and mountainous choruses, A Bad Cavalier prove to be so much more interesting than some of the current alt-rock landscape. You don't often read a sentence like this, but tonight we see And So I Watch You From Afar and The Wonder Villains unite beautifully, as lead guitarist Ryan McGroarty's backing vocals, gel meticulously with frontman Niall Kennedy's. The audience loved it and rightly so. As first impressions go, this sounded huge.
Bringing things to a close came a devastatingly sharp More Than Conquerors. Clearly pleased by the big turn out, the band played up to the home crowd at every opportunity, as a host of tracks both old and new were given a run out. Any early nerves were quickly disposed of during "Well Runs Dry", an older single which still gets people dancing.
This was soon followed by something so outrageous it takes a certain type of band (and audience) to carry it off. Tonight More Than Conquerors proved to be just that, as frontman Kriss Platt & drummer Jaime Neish joined their own mosh pit for a thunderous rendition of "Bear Knuckle Fight". With Neish temporally at the mercy of his own crowd, the band’s roadie then took to the stage, to drum the rest of the song. As the song drew to a close, Platt remained in the audience, with (somehow) an acoustic guitar in hand, serenading his way through a nostalgic ballad, about drinking with his father. While that would have been a justifiably excellent ending, the band had one more trump card left to play. There was no need for encores tonight, skipping the old 'One more tune!' ritual in favour of going straight into the newest weapon in their arsenal - their new single 'Red'. Encouraging the crowd to film it for a DIY music video which the audience were all too happy to participate in - this may have been their best Belfast gig to date.
Taylor Johnson
