Featured image: Matty Vogel
Palm Reader are dab hands at this. They’re a slick machine let down by a mix that congeals their three guitars into one gloopy, soupy mess. Still, it doesn’t stop the Nottingham band from throwing themselves around, with bassist Josh Redrup circling his hand above his head before the breakdown in ‘Swarm’, as if to signal a wrestler’s finishing move. Aside from a small compliant patch of converts at the front, it’s a commandment that goes unheeded.
Frontman, Josh McKeown, cuts a frustrated figure. His between-song patter borders on the sarcastic, cementing their lack of cut-through. The final insult comes during closer, ‘A Bird and its Feathers’. One wag shouts, “Go on, then!”, while waiting for a big finish that doesn’t follow its promising build-up. An off night.
Just ten days shy of the 20th anniversary of their first Manchester show, Thrice are back to celebrate their landmark The Artist in the Ambulance album. A masterclass in early ‘00s post-hardcore, it’s one of the genre’s defining releases. Two decades on, its alchemy of aggression and immediacy remains uneclipsed.
To lend the Californian quartet an added air of mystique, the Academy’s smoke machine goes apoplectic, meaning they’re obscured in fog by the time they tear into ‘Cold Cash and Cold Hearts’. An army of fists puncture the clouds, mirroring each beat of Riley Breckenridge’s kick drum, which threatens to do the same to the audience’s abdomens. Surrounded by fluorescent light tubes that flash through the whole colour spectrum, it’s clear the affection Thrice hold for the album. Dustin Kensrue, anchored to the spot, attacks his guitar with the same vigour as his vocals, while Teppei Teranishi is a flurry of activity as he plucks out a series of intricate riffs.
Midway through a world tour, you could forgive them for holding something back. They don’t. ‘Stare at the Sun’ and the hefty ‘Paper Tigers’ keep the momentum going, with the occasional crowd surfer taking to the waves. The double-edged sword of album shows is that you know what’s coming next, so there’s a mini exodus to the bars once the title track shuttles out of earshot.
The second half of the set is a hopscotch through Thrice’s ten other studio albums. A supercharged rendition of ‘Deadbolt’ from 2002’s The Illusion of Safety reawakens long dormant synapses, but this is a group who have never shackled themselves to any one sound. Smoothing out those hardcore roots made the latter-day likes of ‘Black Honey’ and ‘The Dreamer’ possible, the latter prompting one excitable gent to clamber onto his friend’s shoulders to howl along like a vertical panto horse.
This evolution is key to their longevity. Breadth and depth, rather than chasing a long departed zeitgeist.
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