Concert Review: Miike Snow At The Newport, May 26, 2016

It was almost six years ago that I saw Miike Snow at the now-defunct Kool Haus in Toronto. It was an unforgettable night for many reasons, not least of which was the absolute corker of a performance put on by Andrew Wyatt and his Swedish taskmasters. With just one album's worth of material, and with a musical format that doesn't let itself to covers, they basically played the whole thing front to back then called it a night.

Last night I had a chance to catch up with the group again. They have three albums under their belt now, with the newest one getting a lot of reviews and airplay, but I had some concerns about how they'd do at the Newport, which is a notoriously terrible venue no matter who's playing.

Those concerns were, unfortunately, justified.

The suckitude of the Newport is legendary, but sometimes it works. I saw Living Color there in 1990 when they were touring on the Vivid record. I was right up front. The crowd was angry --- at one point somebody pegged Vernon Reid with a full pitcher of beer --- and Corey Glover was in full Superstar Douchebag mode. There were three encores, the final one arriving after ten minutes of the house lights being up. I was already leaving at that point. But if you want to see something like that, the Newport's the best venue.

For synth-pop, on the other hand, the Newport sucks hard. Most of the music, and virtually all of the vocals, suffered from being washed out by the fuzzy bass and the echo chamber aspect of the venue. If you didn't know the songs going in, you weren't gonna learn them by listening. After about ninety minutes, we snuck out and headed home.

You can describe Miike Snow accurately as "the guy who wrote the songs for Hugh Grant's Music And Lyrics singing in front of two guys who wrote Britney Spears' Toxic album" but that probably doesn't do them justice. All three of the records have been pretty good and the crowd they drew in Toronto was hip, young, and energetic. The Ohio State students that were in the pit last night didn't have any energy. They wanted to hear the hit, "Genghis Khan", and then they wanted to buy some beer. There was some weird MMF three-way thing going on right in front of me: two buffed-out dudes in tight white T-shirts and a very composed brunette woman all touching and rubbing each other. Millennials, I guess.

It wasn't all bad news, though. We arrived at the ticket line only to find that the show was sold out. To my immense surprise and amusement, the girl ahead of me in line had four tickets at will call and she was willing to give me two tickets out of the goodness of her heart. She wouldn't even take a drink in return. I suppose that's my good luck for the year spent then.

If you have a chance to see Miike Snow, I'd recommend it. If you have a chance to never go to the Newport, that's also recommended.