Royal Blood at Mill City Nights, Minneapolis (19 Sept 2014)
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Rock in fact, is alive and kicking, full of lifeblood, and is maybe best personified in two lads from Worthing, UK …whose blood runs royally.
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Royal Blood: Mike Kerr
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Royal Blood, a new duo comprised of Mike Kerr on lead vocals/bass guitar and Ben Thatcher on drums recently played Mill City Nights in Minneapolis, and showed the attending crowd, what the immediate future of Rock, has in store.
On the heels of a successful EP, Out of the Black (Warner Bros/Black Mammoth), the duo has just released their self-titled debut full-length to great acclaim, including a nomination for the fabled Mercury Music Prize in the UK.
Kerr uses pedals, reverb, and effects to make his bass often sound like a lead guitar, and drummer Thatcher hits the skins and keeps the underlying rhythm, like his life depended on it.
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Meg Myers
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Los Angeles-based Tennessee native Meg Myers played a brief opening set, in support of her second EP, Make a Shadow (Atlantic Records), overcoming some initial technical issues. Myers and her 4pc band (which included a cellist, and herself on bass) had an roughness about them, that could also be dark and delicate. This was coupled with her sometimes painful lyrics on songs like ‘Go’ and ‘Desire’, with the latter finding Myers yelling into the mic, “how do you want me”. Closing song, ‘Heart Heart Head’ was heavy with cello and Myers’ vocals were somewhat evocative of Evanescence’s Amy Lee, on the song.
With only one album to their credit (+one EP), their self-titled debut (on Warner/WEA), Royal Blood played a short but powerful 45min. set that covered most of the full album’s songs.
The band was already exuding a confident attitude before they even took the stage, as Jay-Z’s ’99 Problems’ was blasted on the speakers as the band’s intro music. Opener ‘Hole’ from their EP, was a mid-tempo number, full of crunchy blues/rock riffs and dynamic drumming from Thatcher. Kerr’s bass playing style makes him somewhat reminiscent of Josh Homme (the Them Crooked Vultures version, more than QOTSA) and Thatcher usually looked all business on the skins.
Little was said between songs, the duo instead letting the music do most of the talking, with ‘You Can Be So Cruel’ revved up enough to spur swaying in the crowd and a small mosh pit to emerge at floor center. The band’s music has a distinct dichotomy of sounding both raw and technically tight and precise, a quality truly unique among newish harder rock bands.
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Royal Blood Setlist
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Before ‘Little Monster’, Kerr teased the crowd saying he heard the city didn’t like to party, and for them to prove him wrong, which of course, incited the already worked-up audience. Their sound, like other successful duos (White Stripes, Black Keys) is much bigger than the two on stage, and the show seemed to go by very quickly, with the band exiting at the 39 min. mark, only to re-emerge with the evening’s crunchiest and throbbing number, as an encore – ‘Out of the Black’.
Building towards a climatic cacophony of sound to end the evening, the band bowed triumphantly and departed, with the audience so clearly still wanting to hear more. Though it wouldn’t happen this night, there is related good news—Royal Blood hits the road again soon, as openers for The Pixies, including a local stop at The Orpheum Theatre on Sat. October 11th– mark your calendars, as that’s the day Rock comes back to town.
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Royal Blood at Mill City Nights, Minneapolis (19 Sept 2014) |