I have never heard a crowd at The National be as a boisterous, passionate, and just plain loud as I did last night when Arctic Monkeys truly conquered Richmond.
I have never heard a crowd at The National be as a boisterous, passionate, and just plain loud as I did last night when Arctic Monkeys truly conquered Richmond.
Like most of you reading, I’ve been to plenty of shows over the years at The National. While many of them had sold-out crowds that were wild, nothing comes close to the roar of cheers that filled the venue before and after each song. Adding an intense performance and insane light show to that crowd just made for a concert that really transcended The National. In the comfort of the intimate theatre, Richmond witnessed a spectacle that truly rivaled most arena and stadium shows. From the moment the band walked on the stage, there was this unbelievable connection between the crowd and the band that let you know you were part of something truly special. Couple that with the wild opening performance and this might be one of the most unforgettable concerts not just in The National’s short time, but in Richmond’s illustrious history.
The night started off with one of the craziest performances I have ever seen courtesy of The Orwells. Before I get into all their antics, let me just say that musically, the band is fantastic with their gritty yet melodic sound. From “Other Uses” to “Dirty Sheets,” the band’s music alone would have been enough to grab the crowd’s attention. Even their brief garage rendition of The Foundations’ “Build Me Up Buttercup’ was great. Solid musicianship aside though, it was the band’s on-stage performance that defined them. Guitarists Matt O’Keefe and Dominic Corso were just relentless in the beating of their instruments. Bassist Grant Brinner wasn’t too far off from them and I was shocked that drummer Harry Brinner didn’t break a snare drum at any point. Despite all of that going on, everyone’s eyes were fixated on front man Mario Cuomo. Let’s list out some of his antics here, shall we? He jumped into the pit, he stumbled and “fell” into an amp, and he put his hand down his pants and then licked all his fingers. At one point, he deep throated a mic and then chucked a water bottle into the balcony. There’s a sentence I never thought I would write.
Antics notwithstanding, Cuomo has a stage presence like I haven’t seen in years. Throughout most of the set, he seemed more content thrashing, convulsing, or wandering around the stage than he did singing. That apathy for singing coupled with his unbalanced antics reminded me of Darby Crash’s performance captured on the seminal LA documentary The Decline of Western Civilization. Well, less violent, but easily just as frantic. To finish their ridiculous forty-five minute set, the band performed “Southern Comfort,” O’Keefe slid a guitar across the stage, and then Cuomo swung his mic, slammed it into the stage, and then passed the broken pieces out into the crowd. None of this does justice to their truly amazing set. There are just not enough words to fully describe the melodic chaos of The Orwells’ live performance.
I almost made up my mind that there was no way Arctic Monkeys could top The Orwells until the band came out on the stage and the deafening roar from the crowd almost burst my eardrums. As the band opened the night with “Do I Wanna Know?,” the crowd was absolutely losing their minds. You’d expect nothing less from the lead single to the band’s most critically acclaimed record, last year’s AM(which placed at #15 on our Top 25 2014 Albums). What you might not expect is that the crowd kept that same level of fervor throughout the whole night. Lesser known songs like “Pretty Visitors” and even “Evil Twin” (which doesn’t even appear on any album) had the crowd screaming so loud that most of them are probably hoarse today.
The band’s set spanned the band’s short, but critically acclaimed history with every album being represented. Of course, the band’s latest work was represented the most with nine out of the album’s twelve songs being played. What was really great was how the new and older songs sounded together. The band’s always had that quirky garage sound (like on “Don’t Sit Down ‘Cause I’ve Moved Your Chair”), but their album last year represents a much more relaxed sound that finds a groove and expands upon it. After last night, it was evident that there wasn’t so much a new sound as an evolved sound with little nuances here and there to set it apart from the band’s catalogue, but an overriding feeling that doesn’t make it foreign. If someone had never heard Arctic Monkeys before last night, they would have been hard-pressed to tell a difference between songs like “Snap Out Of It” and “Knee Socks.”
From the reaction of the crowd though, it seemed everyone there knew just who the band was and loved every last bit of them. Frontman Alex Turner was treated like a true rock and roll deity from the crowd. While he didn’t deliver a frenzied performance like The Orwells, he definitely held the crowd in the palm of his hand the whole night with a relaxed swagger that was just plain fun to watch. Whereas Cuomo had to flail about to grasp the people’s attention, all Turner had to do here was comb his hair and the crowd just lost it. The band was on point too providing great performances in every song of their twenty-song set. “Crying Lightning” might have been my favorite of the night, but the aura in the building when the band played “I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor” was just surreal. The song is just so amazing and you really can’t put your finger on exactly why. It’s just plain great.
Perhaps that’s the consensus of the evening. There was nothing that you could really put your finger on about the night to make it legendary. There were no Clapton-like solos, no crowd surfing, and no truly blow-away song that left the crowd buzzing. No, it was the entirety of the band’s extremely fine-tuned live show that connected with the Richmond crowd on every level possible. On that stage, it seemed like no other band in the world or in history mattered to Richmond except for Arctic Monkeys. Turner could have forgotten a verse and the crowd would have just glossed over it. That’s not to say we were looking through rose-colored glasses at any time because the band was and is just that spectacular. Arctic Monkeys proved why they’re one of the best bands of the past decade and completely validated our love of the band spanning all the way back to their auspicious debut in 2006. The band’s going to have a hard time finding a crowd in America that was as into their show as Richmond was. It’s going to be even harder for The National and for Richmond itself to find a band who could top that performance.
Check out RVA Magazine’s next issue for an exclusive interview with Arctic Monkeys’ guitarist Jamie Cook!
