Since making his name as a solo songwriter and releasing numerous albums, City & Colours latest album, If I Should Go Before You, saw Dallas Green pick up the electric for the first time since his Alexisonfire days.
City & Colour made his return to Belfast last night in the Mandela Hall since supporting Biffy Clyro at their 2013 Odyssey arena gig (now the SSE Arena). Supporting on this date was Lucy Rose, English Singer-Songwriter who’s set of fantastically charmed filled songs went down well with the crowd.
City & Colour took to the stage at quarter to nine, opening with the fantastic ‘Woman’; a nine-minute psychedelic experience that left me speechless. The band was tight and the music was emotive and powerful. When this track ended I felt ridiculously excited for the rest of the set.
However, after woman the next few songs of the set seemed to blend into one blur of tracks from the new album. What translated well for me on the record didn’t live and I felt like the band, as well as Dallas, became almost bored by their own performances, especially while playing the title track from the new album “If I Should Go Before You” which felt slow and dragged out.
Dallas’s interactions with the crowd were very rare throughout the set, and when he did speak he seemed unenthused and uninterested which really detracted from the overall gig for me. Maybe I just don’t get his sense of humour.
Stand out tracks in the set included “Killing Time” and “Wasted Love” which really stood on the set for me most likely because they stood out to me on the record but live they had the extra punch that I had imagined would be brought to all the tracks from the newest album, but which I felt was missing from the remainder of the set
Another detraction from the show was the lighting. On Numerous occasions the lights focused on the lead guitarist during a solo, which honestly just made the solo feel naff and a little bit cheesy.
Encore “Body In A Box” saw Dallas take to the stage alone with a guitar and a Harmonica. This track went down well with the crowd and is a very lovely simple acoustic song, with slightly melodramatic lyrics but nonetheless a great track. The Encore was ended with the track “Something” which Dallas played for the first half solo before the whole band returned to the stage and exploded for one final kind of anti-climatic hurrah.
Overall, I was pretty disappointed with the gig overall, Woman at the start of the set raised my hopes for a high energy set, but that is unfortunately not what I got. If you are a fan of City & Colour you should still go and see him but it may take a die-hard fan to have got something worthwhile from last nights gig.
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