Miike Snow @ The Showbox (4/10/2016)

I intended to show up in time for the opener (Kaneholler) tonight - I even checked out some of their music earlier in the day - but events conspired to make me miss them like I've seemingly missed all openers as of late.  Oh well.

Another recent trend is that I haven't particularly liked the latest album from the acts that I've been seeing, despite being a mid to long term fan.  Unless further listens cause a change of heart, that appears to be the case with Miike Snow as well.  Thankfully, their setlist contained plenty of older songs to keep me satisfied; and a couple of the new ones didn't come out too badly.

I haven't quite made up my mind how I feel about their live performance.  Their better (and usually older) songs tend to be mostly electronic, which diminishes from the performance aspect.  The newer songs are generally (but not always) more guitar driven, so they allow for more showmanship - too bad I don't like these songs as much.  In any case, I give props to the traveling drummer, who I thought did a pretty good job on the songs, electro or otherwise.

The lead singer (Andrew) is also a puzzler.  His heart seems to be in the right place in terms of being animated and attempting to put on a show, but there are aspects of the execution that cause me to scratch my head a bit.  For example, I don't understand the unnecessary transitions between the microphone up front and the seated position behind the keyboards on the left - sometimes multiple times in a song.  This is further exacerbated by his seeming lack of respect of microphones and wires, which cause a stagehand to have to come on to fix a tangled situation just about every song.  One of these events involved Andrew taking a tumble, which at least resulted in additional support from the crowd when he got back on his feet.

Rating: 4.2/5