Snow Report

The blonde and I headed up to Auckland on Friday. Big ups to her for discovering 9am in the morning, and after a brief detour to the 'nui we were on our way. Much music was played, given she's the one that dubbed me the 'music slut' there was never many issues of not liking each others choices.

After a largely uneventful trip up, we checked in, had our free drink (ahhh drink) and meandered down to find food. Very nice pizza from Fresca Pizza (recommended!), then on to the gig. Neither of us wanted to see the support bands. I might have been keen-ish to see Iain Archer, but timing and dinner combined to prohibit that. Definitely wanted to miss Opshop, who, the blonde and I agree on this, are the most over-rated piece of crap thats been inflicted on NZ ears for sometime. Beer prices were feckin horrendous, $7 for a Crown lager poured into plastic container. So yeah it tasted like crap. I mean Crown aint that great to start with, but dumped unceremoniously into plastic? forgeddaboutit.
So to make a point we had two each. No I don't understand that either, but we wanted piss. And options were limited.

We ambled into the venue since the noise had subsided (Opshop had finished), and positioned ourselves kinda centre-left. Blonde had serious evils thrown her way by some chick, I managed to work out why - random chick had fallen for my stunning good looks and was piss-ey that blonde was with me.

So how good were Snow Patrol? Well firstly I like the band, which explains why I was there. And they delivered. Gary (lead singer) had a great rapport with the audience. Funny, amusing and polished frontman. Go the Gaz! The band were very very tight, unsurprising since they've been on tour for a year now - promoting Eyes Open. Their gig consisted of tracks from Eyes Open and Final Straw, with one other track that might have been from the earlier albums (I've only heard a few demos from them). Style-wise it was similar to the recent stuff, so could have been a b-side. Big cheers for Eyes Open, Chasing Cars etc as the hits. But stand-out for me was Run. Admittedly it's one of my all-time favourite songs, but it was very emotionally draining. Run was one of Frances' favourite songs too, and Final Straw was the album we'd played the night we wandered into hospital. Yeah I shed water. But it was nice too.
The gig itself was fun, but I was struck by how weak the drummer is. There isn't a lot of interesting drum parts on the albums, and it showed in the live shows. One nice aspect of the show was that the band did change arrangements a little, and it didn't seem a 'tired' show, which at the end of a tour could have been a problem. So yay Snow Patrol.
Definitely recommend them as a live act, kinda big scale pub band who did manage to connect with the audience.

We headed out in search of drink afterwards and had a fun time drinking and singing while watching a bit of sport in an Irish bar.
Being adorable I had coffee ready when blonde awoke, ok so it was entirely self-interest as I wanted coffee and she happened to be awake, but lets spin this positively shall we? Sushi for brunch (recommended - Sushi Train down by the basin), then meandering around until we left around 3pm. I was excited by her CD player recognising Porc Tree's new album - coming up with titles and band. Yes it's the small things.

All in all, fun roadtrip and gig. And big ups to the blonde for a) a car, b) good music selection and c) fun person to spend many hours with, both sober and not-so-sober :)

me xx