I’m all for the “classic album” tour, where a band dusts off one of the best records in its back catalogue, and plays the whole thing live. Fu Manchu’s done that a couple times lately, and those were some pretty sick shows, bro! And while I’ve already seen Boris a buncha times, knowing they’d be playing Pink this time around certainly made this gig more special.
Pink is pretty much the quintessential Boris album. Not only is it the closest they’ve come to that stoner/doom stuff all the kids are listening to these days, but it also contains a few tracks where they kick out the jams like the MC5 on takoyaki (which is not nearly as noxious as it sounds), most notably the title track itself. For a band with such an extensive, yet varied back catalogue, Pink is often the gateway drug–the record you recommend to someone who doesn’t know where to start. And while they might have busted out Absolutego at a festival a few years ago, there’s no doubt that if they were to give one album the full tour treatment, it would be Pink.
This shindig should actually be more impressive south of the border, where Earth is the opening act. However, due to Dylan Carlson’s documented history with controlled substances, the band is clearly inadmissible to Canada. In its place, we got local openers Comet Control, who just put out their second album on Tee Pee. Though their debut leaned more toward garage-rock, they’ve returned to their Quest For Fire roots on their sophomore effort, and that was abundantly evident in their 35-minute set.
A typical Boris live set is all over the place, both sonically and chronologically. But even though they played every song off of Pink, they didn’t actually play the album in sequence, most notably leaving opening track “Farewell” until the end. (I suppose it might’ve made sense to put it at the end of the album, too.) With some of their more recent, mellower fare, I’d almost forgotten that these guys could really shred–and with all that Orange amplification, there were many face-melting moments this evening. We even got a couple stage-divers, like it was a punk rock show or something…except at this gig, the grunge kids would actually say sorry when they bumped into you.
