Beats, Rhymes & Kyle

I know its been a few days since the show but I wanted to get my media game right before releasing the review (see Flickr & You Tube). I haven’t been to Wrongbar before but the decor was strangely reminiscent of a little place down the street that you may know of called The Social. I won’t get into the details, but I will say that if the two places switched their names, I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

I arrived there a little before the show to meet up with some friends and avoid the crowd. The drinks were reasonably priced, nothing to write home about. The opening DJ was, how one might say, abominable. I almost believed at one point that he had iTunes playlist going with the crossfade on but then I looked up and saw no computer, just the DJ thumbing through a CD booklet while he let an entire song play through until the bitter end. The music seemed to get the crowd going, somewhat, so I guess his job was being accomplished.

Nearing midnight the crowd grew more and more anxious as droves of people cascaded toward the stage yelling and spilling beer on one another. I had one nice chap in a colorful baseball hat continually howl “Go back to Monkton” for no apparent reason other than piss off the few people that was in front of him, it was really funny.

Eventually the show got underway and were greeted by the most high pitched intro I have ever heard that lasted for a good 5 minutes, thankfully Alice jumped out and rocked the house. The live drummer was quite good and added something that I thought the show would suffer without. They played songs back to back with small breaks where Alice would run out the back door which I guess was for cooling off because, frankly, it was dreadfully hot inside Wrongbar. I recognized a few songs, such as Alice Practice, but it didn’t really matter if I knew them or not, the show was quite amazing however the choice of lighting was questionable. The whole stage lighting consisted of strobe lights. Yes you heard correctly. Strobe lights! There was 2 on either end of the stage pointing toward the band, and one which Alice could pick up and swing around. I thought of that episode of The Simpsons when they went to Japan when they were watching the Cartoon show that gave seizures, I felt I was going to hit the floor.

The crowd was absolutely wild where kids would jump on stage only to get kicked off by the one bouncer that was there. Just as the show was hitting its peak, the crowd loving every minute of it the show abruptly stopped and all 3 band members quickly exited the stage. I know they don’t have enough material to play a decently long show, and the fact that the tickets were only $13.50, but Crystal Castles could have gone on for a good hour more and the people would still be yearning for more. With that being said, I’ll definitely be at the next show when they come back home.

I took some pictures and compiled a video of all the clips that I took. Caution if you are sensitive to strobe lights.

Flickr Photo Album