Cog @ The Enmore - 16/05/2008

Last night I was lucky enough to be part of a large entourage headed towards the Enmore to see Cog. Been a big Cog fan for a long time and I was confident I wouldn't be disappointed. Neither of the two support acts for the evening were Australian, let alone from Sydney. While Jakob don't particularly interest me with their ambient instrumental rock, Kora were a band I was dying to see.

Unfortunately there was no opportunity to see either as we arrived about 20 minutes before Cog started, and to hear every single person say how good Kora were sunk a little disappointment into my heart. But these things can't be helped and we were there to see a show for crying out loud. The house lights went down, the crowd got loud and then even louder as John Farnhams' 'You're the voice' played as an intro. With the audience in full voice the band took the stage and then contrasted the hype by opening with the first track from the new album - No Other Way, which went down well but restarted the momentum. Current single 'Bird Of Feather' was next and it really is one of those songs with a chorus that screams stadium rock.

By this point there were already a few points of notice - the light show was unlike anything I've seen at the Enmore. Very colourful, lots of strobes and flashes as well as spotlights and a thick (sometimes too thick) cloud of smoke enhancing it all. One of the best I've seen lately. The music sounded brutal and certainly put to rest peoples doubts (mine included) about how the new material would go live. The vocal mix however was uneven throughout the night, sometimes absolutely perfect, and at other times completely incomprehensible. A particular highlight though was the crowd participation during 'Real Life' (watch the vid)


Throughout the night front man Flynn Gower engaged the crowd, speaking of how they had played to their biggest audience the night before in Melbourne before adding 'the biggest audience until now' to rapturous cheering. He also gave an explanation towards the current album - no doubt under fire from people who haven't the patience or understanding to comprehend that the band didn't want to just do the last album over again. It was good to see him address it but at the same time, for him to do so obviously means there has been significant criticism. (The album is fantastic, go and buy it).

Being so relatively close throughout the night I happened to notice something perculiar though. For those of you who don't know what a click track is, it's a metronome fed directly into each band members ears through a monitor. Alot of bands use them and given Cog's development in sound, use of samples and lighting cues I am more than understanding of the fact that they may need to use one for consistency. What I can't get behind is when I can hear backing vocals, the drummer and bassist both have microphones, and neither is singing. This doesn't seem to bother other people as much as it does me. A click track is one thing, but a backing track? Sadly it casts negative aspersions on the integrity of their live performance. And it makes me wonder how often they actually do it, if they've done it previous times before this album came along. The night closed with no encore. While I'm happy to settle with that the amount of good material that was left out for the sake of some of the newer songs was also disappointing.

In conclusion I have mixed feelings about last night. On the plus side the music was fantastic, the crowd was bloody awesome and in the 'price vs set length' category these guys come in second (to JBT 02 - $30 for over 3 hours), $40 for over an hour and a half jam packed including the supports (if you caught them) it was value. On the minus side were the setlist (this is only a personal thing, play some more New Normal if you ask me, at least Anarchy OK ffs), which was still good. 'The Spine' sent the place bananas and a trek back to the first EP with 'Moshiach' was freaking awesome. For the neutral spectator and the Cog fanatic, last nights show was perfect. For me though? I'm a little disillusioned. I'm sure backing vox (mimed or not) will be sorted out as the tour progresses so don't let me stop you from catching them. Cog are a great band, and certainly worth the $40 - I'll leave it at that.


Setlist (approx)
No Other Way
Bird Of Feather
Resonate
Are You Interested?
Sharing Space
Four Walls
The Spine
Town Of Lincoln
Moshiach
The Movies Over
Swamp
Real Life
What If?
My Enemy
Bitter Pills