Date: May 1, 2008
Venue: The Phoenix

Don’t take your SLR camera to the Phoenix.

That was the first thing I learned upon showing up to check out The Constantines on Thursday night. Basically, I was told that a compact point-and-shoot would have been fine, but I couldn’t bring a “professional looking” camera into the venue. This is the same thing that happened to me at the Danforth Music Hall last year when I went to see Iron and Wine—my girlfriend was actually allowed through with a 7 megapixel compact Panasonic, but our Nikon D80 scared them. No one’s been able to adequately explain the reasons for this so far, as I think it’s a bit lame. In any case, I wasn’t getting in with a scary SLR, so I compromised by leaving the battery with security.

As it turns out, not having a working camera with me was a bit of a blessing. On the one hand, it means I’ve got no shots from the show to post, but on the other I didn’t have to worry about being front and centre snapping pics. I was able to just relax and enjoy the excellent live display that I paid good money to see.

Showing up in time for Attack in Black to do their thing, I was admittedly under-informed about the Welland, Ontario band. That said, it was easy to see right from the get go that their driven and spirited rock was a good match for the Constantines.

Attack in Black - Hunger of the Young

Of course, while Attack in Black evoked the things I like about the Constantines, it took mere seconds of watching the headliners to exemplify why I would be so eager to see them live in the first place. Raucous, confident and loud, the Cons delivered a solid set with some truly excellent moments. Not the least of which being an explosive rendition of “Seven A.M.” during the encore (all the more impressive seeing as I usually don’t care much for Steve Lambke’s vocals).

By the time everyone’s fists were pumping to AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck,” the final song of the evening, it was obvious that Bry Webb’s pipes were a little worse for wear. I suppose there’s only so much high-volume gritt one set of vocal chords can handle.

Given my inability to take any pictures during the show I was instead able to pay close attention to the set list. In retrospect it’s a bit of an odd collection if you consider the omission of certain Cons classics (like “Young Offenders” or “On to You”), not to mention an unfortunate disregard for Shine a Light in general (in fact, “Young Lions” was the only track played from that album). Here’s the set list as I heard it (feel free to offer corrections):

01. Hotline Operator
02. Working Full-Time
03. Lizaveta
04. Hard Feelings
05. Young Lions
06. Million Star Hotel
07. Little Instruments
08. Shower of Stones
09. Time Can Be Overcome
10. Thieves
11. Soon Enough
12. Trans Canada
13. Justice
14. Arizona
15. Do What You Can Do

Encore:

16. Hyacinth Blues
17. Seven A.M.
18. Thunderstruck

Chart posted an interestingly skewed synopsis of this show the other day titled “Constantines Don’t Experience Much Love For Kensington” (check it out for some more detail on Attack in Black). I have to wonder if we attended the same concert, as not only does the article’s title seem more than a bit embellished, but the author also went as far as to say:

“Another dinosaur band trait the headliners exhibited was to largely ignore their current album in favour of their more popular tracks.”

This seems a bit unfair to me, given that a quick glance at the above set list shows that their latest release, Kensington Heights, was well represented. In fact, the amount of tracks played from each of their 4 respective full-lengths was as follows: Kensington Heights - 6, Tournament of Hearts - 5, Constantines - 5, Shine a Light - 1. Go figure.

The Constantines - Seven A.M.