Anathema | Live Review

Ten years ago, Anathema played Ireland having just released the ‘Judgement’ album. I can’t remember too much about it, except the only thing I feel I need to - a dark Rosetta Bar bathed in violet light, and the strains of ‘Angelica’ tugging on the heartstrings so fiercly it was impossible to be unmoved. Over the years, I put that in the special box. Never did I honestly think a show like that would be equalled by the band again. A combination of time, place and music impossible to repeat.

Their show in 2003 (ish?) only served to compund the idea. Idiots shouting for ‘Sleepless’ rightly pissed the band off, and the total indifference bordering on confusion of most hairies present to ‘A Fine Day To Exit’ made it an uncomfortable evening. Those were the difficult years, years of a band uncertain of themselves and of their place. The truth is that the band still find themselves uncertain of those two things. Things are still hard on them. This is a guess - but perhaps it’s why Anathema are  producing music so exquisitely sad, so explosively emotional, that they are now, ironically, at the absolute height of their powers.

Last Sunday night’s show blew thier Rosetta appearance a decade ago out of the water. Their instrumentation is richer these days, their songwriting more honest, their delivery more impassioned and their attitude no longer stymied by metal expectations. They’ve grown up, and thankfully, so at last have the larger proportion of their audience. The side effect of this was intoxicating: an entire audience placid, largely quiet, and just cumulatively awestruck within their own memories.

Because everyone has (and should have) Anathema memories. You could see it on the faces. There wasnt much need for a lot of conversation. Vincent Cavanagh’s fragile, vulnerable, and yet somehow massively powerful voice would sing a line, important to some, throaway to others, and you could see the eyes glaze over and the mouths intoning every vowel.

It’s as if they just decided to make everybody hurt a little - culling the set mostly from ‘Alternative 4′ and ‘A Natural Disaster’ in the largely acoustic rock format found on the beautiful ‘Hindsight’. Lee Douglas, brother of drummer John, coming out to sing was just… I dont even know what it was. Time stood still, and one could literally watch flecks of dust sparkle slowly through the stage lights as we were all just somewhere else entirely.

Danny Cavanagh’s beautiful ‘Are You There’, a little solo gift, was delicate, good natured, and received with the kind of smiling gratitude that an audience couldnt even fake if it wanted to. ‘Flying’s final hook was squeezed out with all the energy and exertion they had, while nods to ‘Eternity’ in the form of ‘Hope’ (the Pink Floyd aspirations continue) and ‘Angelica’ were simply pitch perfect.

Even with one’s favourite bands, it’s usually time to go time when they’ve done their thing. Two hours of this didnt even register - it could have gone on, for everyone, another two without pause. Anathema are dangerously brilliant at this point in time. Dangerous in the command they have over everyone’s emotions except their own, hence the continuing wellspring of their dark, hurt, exquisitely poingant music. Who knows where it will lead.

The band say that their new material is light years ahead of even ‘A Natural Disaster’. I know, because I’ve heard it. When the world will finally wake up, when the band will be allowed to make the ultimate transition, is anyone’s guess. It happened for Porcupine Tree. It can happen for the Liverpudlians. And rather than lament that it took so long, they will be so able, so brilliantly able to destroy people’s guards, hit their pain so precisley where it hurts, that the adulation they deserve may finally come to them.

Until then we only have unforgettable, beautiful nights like this. Rarely have I seen so peculiarly peaceful and together an audience, all craving for the one thing - that the band would just play on, and that the night would never end. “One life, one love, one sorrow.”

Earl Grey ::: 08/03/09
Photo with thanks to Claire Craig