Sparklehorse - Queen Elizabeth Hall

This was the first time I’d been to the Queen Elizabeth Hall, part of the Royal Festival Hall complex in South Bank – so I was more than impressed with the theatre, in particular it’s acoustics (the sound for the show was first class) and the great view we had from even our fairly poor seats (I go tickets late so we were in LL).

The night kicked off with Sol Seppy – an interesting combo led by the very Australian sounding Sophie Michalitsianos. The short set was reasonably diverse, from the solo piano opener – to a full sample driven closer. Still the most dominant impact for me was how much Sophie’s vocals sound like Angie Hart, of long-defunct Melbourne pop-combo Frente.

It’s been many years since I saw Sparklehorse perform a few shows in Australia – and I think at the time budget restrictions meant it was a scaled-down version of the band that was presented down-under.

I was pleased when we returned from interval to see the stage set-up for a full combo of guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, pedal steel, a sampler, and even a glockenspiel.

That said – despite the diverse instrumentation – my one criticism of the show was it was something of a one-note performance – with leader Mark Linkus concentrating on the slow and mid tempo material. Although when this includes such cracker songs as “Good Morning Spider”s ‘Painbirds’ and “It’s A Wonderful Life”s ‘Eyepennies’ – their really isn’t a lot to complain about. Still it was good to hear a change of pace with the ‘Hammering The Cramps’ towards the end of the main set, and “Pig” to close the first encore.

As anticipated, their was a focus on material from the just released “Dreamt For Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain”, of which ‘Don’t Take My Sunshine Away’ was the stand-out for me.

Although somewhat surprisingly, the show still features mostly material from the Sparklehorse debut “Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot”: ‘Gasoline Horseys’, Sad & Beautiful World”, and Sophie from Sol Seppy joining for harmony vocals on “Tears on Fresh Fruit”. ‘Spirit Ditch’ opened the first encore, and ‘Homecoming Queen’ as the soul second encore. A great show – with the intricate sound extremely well matched to a venue.