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All-American Rejects [Live] @ Shepherds Bush Empire, London
29th January 2009 February 5, 2009, 01:16 AM Views: 527
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 All-American Rejects are on stage and immediately you hear the haunting propitious keyboards of the intro to "Swing Swing" as the crowd go, as expected, ecstatic. I'm sure I actually squealed with excitement as I quickly realised they were playing my favourite song EVER of theirs. After behaving like a ridiculous with some jumping/dancing around (pretty much the only person on the balcony behaving like that) it suddenly dawned on me that the moment I was most looking forward to was ending. I had hoped when thinking about the set order earlier that they would save "Swing Swing" for the encore, and was a little disappointed they had chosen to play it first, straight off the bat. A great introduction it was, it would have made an OUTSTANDING momentous building encore. But I guess they have to mix it up a little every now and then, they can't close with that song every night. I suppose.
Front man Tyson Ritter, very reminiscent in mannerisms and stage presence to Steven Tyler (one wonders if mostly intentional, perhaps? Only missing is a couple of scarves tied around the mic stand and then he'd have it spot on), goaded and excited the crowd inbetween songs by referring to us as "bitches" and "motherfuckers" in the midst of his chat before quickly moving from song to song. Second song played that night was "One More Sad Song" (fairly non descript), followed by "Dirty Little Secret". Their objective apparently appearing to be to get all the hits out of the way early, leaving me to wonder what they were going to use for their encore and so on; had they a surprise in store for us that I’d completely forgotten about?
They played "My Paper Heart" followed by another popular classic of theirs, "Stab My Back", closely followed by current single, "Gives You Hell". This clearly proved to be one of the best moments of the show for the majority of the audience, unsurprising really considering the so-called double whammy the band just threw at them; at the end of "Gives You Hell" Ritter notes the crowds overzealous response and genuinely appeares to be a taken aback, saying something along the lines of, "wow, you guys over here sure love that song, don't ya?!". More like we're fickle bastards and that song is you're current single, ha ha.
They moved onto the slower part of their set with “It Ends Tonight” before briefly speeding up for “Top of the World”, “I Wanna” and “Real Worlds” until finally arriving to their closer (before encore) “Move Along”. Although these songs were performed almost record standard perfectly and you couldn’t pick a fault in the musicianship even if your life was dependant on it, regrettably I found their performance a little lack luster, empty, without soul. This was a really unfortunate observation for me as although All-American Rejects are the kings of over production, I had always felt there was soul in the music, sincerity. Maybe there was, initially, but it seemed to have been lost for tonight's performance. However, if their current single is anything to go by, they’re undoubtedly going down a cheesy emotive-less route, that is ultimately solely driven for a coveted 'top ten spot'.
To end a pretty unexpectedly ‘blah’ set, for their encore they played "Believe" and the aptly titled, "The Last Song", and again, like their show, the choices were a bit of let down. What a shame.
Last edited by jack s : February 5, 2009 at 09:50 AM.
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| | | | Overall Rating | | 5 | | Vocals / Lyrics | | 5 | | Musicianship | | 7 | | Production | | 7 | | Creativity | | 2 | | Lastability | | 3 | | Reviewers Tilt | | 5 |
49% | |
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