It always seemed slightly surreal that Two Door Cinema Club would come and play at Durham College, and almost as odd that Tokyo Police Club would play here. On the list of the tour dates for this current North American tour, Oshawa stuck out like a sore thumb. EP Taylor’s was about a quarter of the size of most of the venues on the tour, and that’s why this show was so great.
Northern Ireland’s Two Door Cinema Club played first. They had achieved quite a bit of success in the United Kingdom over the last year by taking Foals-style mathy indie rock and adding a huge dose of poppiness to it. Judging by this performance, 2011 will likely be the year they conquer North America also. The set highlights were obviously their two strongest songs, ‘What You Know’ and ‘Something Good Can Work’, as well as, to a lesser extent, ‘Undercover Martyn’ and set closer ‘I Can Talk’. TDCC also played a smattering of new songs, which sounded slightly more mature than the songs off of their debut album Tourist History. Of the new songs, ‘Hand Shake’ sounded the best. Even though the crowd wasn’t as receptive to them as they were to Tokyo Police Club (I’m sure alcohol MIGHT have had something to do with that, plus the fact that TPC are Canadian), Two Door Cinema Club were many times better than TPC in terms of live performance.
So then it was time for Tokyo Police Club, and as per usual, their live performance was kind of disappointing. They just don’t sound good live, plus no matter what they seem to do, their newer songs have never again attained the heights of their debut mini-LP, A Lesson In Crime. However, the must-have-been-sell-out crowd more than made up for this, going crazy for the majority of TPC’s set. Halfway through the set, a highly inappropriate mosh pit started, and surprisingly, it continued for the rest of the night, much to the obvious discomfort of singing bassist Dave Monks. It was the second most inappropriate mosh pit I’ve seen, the most inappropriate one was at a Los Campesinos! show, and that one was more impressive because it wasn’t as alcohol-fueled. Set highlights included all of the four songs from A Lesson In Crime they played, as well as ‘Tessellate’, ‘Your English Is Good’, and ‘Wait Up (Boots of Danger)’.
The moral of the story is that TDCC are a great live band, TPC are not, but drunk people will go crazy either way.
-Scott Kendall
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