Something For Kate

Friday night I attended a Something For Kate concert. I think it was probably my eighth or ninth, I lost track a while ago. They're certainly not my favourite band, but they are local so are reasonably cheap and easy to see so Narelle and I probably see them an average of once a year.

Friday night's show was one of the best I'd seen in a while. Typically when you go and see a band they are touring in support of their new album, so at least half of their set is comprised of new material. Which often isn't as good as their classic stuff. This tour though Something For Kate are promoting their new "Greatest Hits" album, so right from the start, they were just focusing on their best songs. I think they played three songs off of "Beautiful Sharks" in the first half hour.

I think the highlight was their cover of Elliott Smith's "Waltz #2". It's a great song anyway, and they did a fantastic version, with just Paul on acoustic guitar and Pip accompanying him on violin. This is pretty standard for a Something For Kate show - even though I like their original material, the best moments tend to be when they pull out the cover songs. It's probably a combination of the arrangements they come up with, as well as the fact that they pick really great, and well known songs to do - the last few times I've seen them they've perfomed "Rock the Casbah" by The Clash, "Everybody Knows" by Leonard Cohen, "Born to Run" by Bruce Springsteen, "The Killing Moon" by Echo and the Bunnymen, "Ashes to Ashes" by David Bowie, "Won't Back Down" by Tom Petty . . . just a great list of songs.

If I had to rate this amongst the concerts I've seen in the past few weeks I'd say it was my favourite. The venue (Fowlers Live) is a good one, and it's nice to be able to stand in relative comfort four metres away from the front of the stage. The setlist was a good mix of songs from all of their albums, and the performance was very solid. A class evening through and through.

Next up . . .Tori Amos.